


Come Back To Me...

by ireallydidthistomyself



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1930s, 1940s, F/M, Historical AU, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, World War Two, a lot of like The War and The Past, anna is the way she is in this bc i actually think it's sort of fun and sexy that she's a sociopath, anyway it's not between dean/cas, atonement au, because like what types of freaks is that gonna bring in, feel extremely skeezy tagging anything for rape, it's ketch/ruby, lobotomies, plot differences from atonement, the rape is less graphic than even in atonement, vague references to ECT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:21:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24888274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ireallydidthistomyself/pseuds/ireallydidthistomyself
Summary: 1935, England. During a hot summer weekend spent at her family's country house, Anna Milton sees something from her bedroom window, something that she thinks she understands, but really doesn't, between her brother and their gamekeeper. The aftermath of this emerges into a saga that spans all the way through world war two until 1989 and sees the interweaving and destruction of the lives caught up in that fateful weekend.(Destiel Atonement AU.)
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Ruby/Sam Winchester
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	1. Summer, 1935

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like my brains have rotted out of my ears that im writing destiel fic but i caught up during quarantine and then i watched Atonement and here i am. the rape is in this chapter, it's little more than a sentence, if you've already seen atonement you'll understand it's a)plot necessary and b)not at all graphic and i think i wrote it even less than graphic or exploitative than in atonement itself. i don't know what else to say except like i pray to god no one i know in real life ever finds this.

It was one of those hot days in the summer where the air sort of sticks to you. Anna Milton, who was twenty three and lovely, lounged about in her bedroom. She had been attempting a manuscript on her Remington (a birthday gift from her indulgent older brother Gabriel), but getting nowhere. When it’s that hot the heat can make even the gears of your brain slow to a halt. Absentmindedly, she looked out of her bedroom window, hoping to see the early approach of her brother who was due home that day.

The past few days had seemed to just be a flurry of new arrivals. She had arrived from Oxford on that Monday, and had the quiet of the house and their mother’s prying attention all to herself for the first few days. Their gamekeeper’s younger brother, Samuel, came back from Oxford himself a day later, having just completed his own first year. He had stayed on an extra day, he said, to get one more good day of summer in with his school chums. On Thursday, her own younger brother, Castiel, Cas to all of them (his full name had been just a result of their father’s brief penchant for Christian mythology), had arrived from his second year at Cambridge, exhausted and uncommunicative, to her great annoyance. Saturday their younger cousins, Ruby and her twin brothers, Sammy and Alfie, had arrived (shipped up quietly to avoid their parents’s ugly divorce), and today, Sunday, her brother Gabriel and some glamorous friend of his, were supposed to turn up. With each new arrival Anna had expected for some sort of excitement or life to be breathed into the house, but was left again with the same stale, unmoving air as before. To her annoyance, she was largely left alone or worse, with her mother who had nothing but criticism for her.

Craning her neck and brushing her bright red hair out of her face, she looked out the window. There, at the fountain in their lawn’s center, was Cas furiously conversing with their young gamekeeper, Dean Winchester. Anna peered in closer. The Miltons had been raised nearly alongside the Winchesters, taking special interest in them after the death of their mother. Anna and Dean were the same age, born barely a month apart, and Sam was only a year younger than Cas. When their father had died, Dean had taken on his position, and their contact had petered out, the line between household and servant drawn sharper, though their interest in each other had gone nowhere. Sam, unlike Dean, had proved himself intelligent and her father was paying for him to study law at Oxford. She’d never seen a person prouder than Dean when he saw him off at the train that fall. Her mother hadn’t found it decent.

The moment by the fountain, she realized, hadn’t become decent either, as Dean had yelled something at Cas who had stripped down to his underthings and jumped into the fountain. Anna watched curiously as Cas swam up and stood on the edge, staring defiantly down at Dean. What a scene, she thought, feeling strange and unsettled. She hadn’t liked the look, even from a distance, of the gamekeeper’s eyes on her brother. And more unsettling was the idea that he had asked him to undress, forced him maybe, or even, a voice hissed in her ear, that Cas had complied under no compulsion at all. She watched Cas stride off and considered the scene curiously. Turning back to her Remington and preparing for a way to pass the rest of the day, she knew it was nothing she could forget.

_A day earlier…_

Cas was reclining on the small chaise in Anna’s bedroom, flipping through a book as she sat at her boudoir, anxiously messing with her hair.

“Mummy says it looks limpid,” Anna tells him, fixed on her own reflection.

“It’s glowing.”

“It’s common, that’s what she says, red hair is common.”

“In Ireland maybe,” Cas told her absentmindedly.

“Mmm, maybe mummy had an affair with an Irishman.”

“Anna!” Cas said, looking horrified. “You can’t say that!”

“Can’t I?”

“Mummy would never,” he told her firmly.

“Oh mummy would, she once told me she thinks you’re a bastard,” she attempted to twist her hair up behind her as she spoke, as if this was such a casual conversation.

“That can’t be true!”

“Honestly Cassie, you were born in 1915. Daddy left for the war in 1914. You do the math.”

“Mummy said she conceived me the night before he left.” It was a story Cas had been told many times, a last loving night between their usually buttoned up parents. He liked it.

“And you believed her?”

“Of course I did.”

“Well that’s very giving of you.” Cas closed his book and glared at her.  
“You’re being a real beast Anna.”

“All I’m saying is where do you think those lovely blue eyes come from?” Anna laughed. “Gabe and I both have hazel.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“We had a groundskeeper at the time, I forget his name, I was so little. But he had blue eyes too. Stunning blue eyes, I remember that. Mummy dismissed him and brought on the Winchesters not long before you were born.” Anna watched Cas’s eyes perk up at the mention of that surname.

“You stole that from the Lawrence novel,” Cas accused. Anna shot him an innocent look.

“What Lawrence novel, Cassie? I don’t remember reading any novel by Mister Lawrence with that plot.” Anna deadpanned and her brother turned red. “Unless, of course, you’re referring to that vile book, the one that’s been banned here, that’s only printed in French? Couldn’t be that. Good little Cas would never read that, would he? It’s not the sort of thing he would have lying about in his things would he?”

“If you know the plot it means you read it too, you can’t get me in trouble,” he told her. “Besides, I have been an admirer of his prose for a while. I didn’t read it for the…”

“Pornography? No, I don’t think it would do much for you.” Anna held up a string of pearls to her neck, and then decided against it. Cas turned on her with menace in his eyes.

“I don’t understand what you mean by that,” he said sharply.

“That you’re practically a monk. That you’re twenty years old and I would bet I’m the only girl you’ve seen all of. And that hasn’t been since we were children.” In truth, Cas could barely remember what Anna looked like naked. They’d been so buttoned up and separated by the help so young. At Harrow he’d seem plenty of boys in full, hiding his own discomfort as they stripped in the dormitories each evening. And even at Cambridge he’d been invited along for many a midnight swim in the River Cam, though he’d mostly denied such offers. It was indecent, he’d explained, and he had to get back to his books.

“I’m far too busy for things like that,” Cas told her. Anna snorted.

“But free enough to read _Lady Chatterley's Lover_ ,” she retorted with a quirk of her eyebrow. “That seems unlikely.”

“How did you even get your hands on it?” He asked her.

“Girlfriend at school passed it on to me. Picked it up in French while on holiday. Found it a bit too wordy for my taste,” Anna told him, indifferent. “You?” Again, he blushed.

“Gabriel gave it to me. For my...education,” he managed to spit out.

“Education...oh _Cassie_ ,” she laughed dryly, and then gazed back at her reflection. “Maybe I need powder, I think I look rather flushed.”

“You look lovely. You always do,” he told her, a real affection coating his voice.

“You could certainly do with some. This conversation seems to have rendered you redder by the minute,” she prodded.

“I’m not going downstairs looking like a painted whore,” Cas responded stiffly.

“Is that what you think I look like?” Anna couldn’t contain a true bite in her voice.

“No, of course not. I’m sorry.”

“You’re right though, it would look that way on you.” There was a slight smile in her eyes. “Maybe I will wear a little rouge though, if only because mummy hates it.”

“Why must you get her angry?” Cas asked. “It becomes a fuss for all of us.”

“I’ll never be up to her standards no matter what I do,” Anna said, “I can at least have some fun while I disappoint her.”

“You shouldn’t disappoint her. You’re very accomplished,” Cas rose from the chaise to stand by her shoulder.

“She doesn’t approve of me being a writer,” Anna explained. “And it’s more than that. She could never approve of a thing about me. She once said she could barely stand me as a baby. Too red faced and I howled like a banshee.” Cas reached across her vanity and offered her a pair of earrings.

“These might do. Bring out your eyes,” he suggested.

“Yes, I think you’re quite right,” she said, fastening them in place. “I don’t know why I’m fussing so much, the guests are for you.”

“What are you talking about, the cousins are here to be sent away from their parents’s divorce.”

“Yes, and why would mummy and daddy take in such an unfortunate trio? Hmm?” Anna questioned.

“Charity.”

“When have they cared for that? No, it’s that Cousin Ruby is set to inherit quite a lot, no matter how the divorce falls, and they have their eye on her for you,” Anna enjoyed the shock in Cas’s face.

“Ruby’s a baby!” His last memories of seeing her had been a dark eyed twelve year old, tormenting their cat.

“Not anymore, she’s sixteen and apparently she’s grown up pretty. I doubt she’s mellowed though,” Anna added snidely.

“It’s a ridiculous idea.”

“That’s what I told mummy. But she had her heart set on it.”

“I don’t know why she’s so desperate for me to marry,” Cas complained, “I haven’t even reached my majority yet. And I’m not the heir.”

“Yes, but she knows that Gabe will marry. He’s never without some vapid socialite on his arm. You on the other hand…” Anna trailed off. “As I said before, we don’t exactly have doubts about your virginity.”

“I’m sorry if I’m more old fashioned than our brother,” Cas said stiffly.

“Old fashioned? Oh Cas, it’s 1935, get over yourself.” She hummed a little. “ _Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it…_ ”

“Where’d you learn that song?”

“It’s just Cole Porter. Dean was playing it yesterday, he let me listen in,” Anna responded idly.

“You didn’t ask me to join.”

“No Cassie,” she rolled her eyes. “You were too busy with your books.”

Across the house, in the servants quarters, in a room with a door that wouldn’t lock and a broken window that turned the room into an icebox in the winter, Dean Winchester cleaned out muskets as his younger brother Sam ranted to him.

“You shouldn’t let them do that you know,” the younger brother said, referring to Dean’s task. “Work when you’re working, nothing when you’re not.”

“Come off it Sammy, I gotta get these finished early if the gentlemen want to hunt tomorrow and I can’t find another hour to clear out for it,” Dean replied, bending over his work.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Sam huffed, “You know at Oxford there was lots of talk.”

“Oh was there?”

“Russia isn’t going to be the only place where workers rise up. England is a backwards world and soon there’ll be a breaking point. The few can’t hold all the money power in the country much longer. Who’s to say they’re better than us just because they’re from older families or larger houses? It’s feudalism.”

“What-a-lism?” Dean questioned.

“Feudalism. Like the medieval world. Serfs work for the lord of the manor. It’s how we are now. Just because their ancestors ingratiated themselves with some long dead duke and ours didn’t,” Sam continued. “And they think what, oh we speak different so we’re-“

“Speak different? I don’t mean to stop ya there, but you speak just like them. Have since you were in school. I’m the only one about here who speaks a lick different.”

“Received pronunciation, I’ve explained it to you many times, and I’m ashamed of it,” Sam said with an awkwardness.

“Look, I don’t think they haven’t got a reckoning coming to them. But it won’t happen here, not in England. Everyone’s too set in their ways. And with the war coming, they certainly won’t.” Dean’s voice was hard, but Sam couldn’t help but find the truth in it.

“You don’t think they’ll certainly be a war do you?”

“It’s what everyone seems to say,” said Dean. “Don’t know what could stop it.”

“And you’ll what...join up?” Sam asked. Dean let out at a huff.

“Won’t want to, no plans on fighting their bloody wars, but doubt I’ll have much of a choice,” Dean lifted his head and met his brother’s eyes. “You on the other hand, you stay out of it. Become such a great solicitor they can’t afford to spare ya.”

Sam’s face darkened.

“Dad was never the same after the Great War, that’s what you always said-“ Dean cut him off.

“Don’t go worrying about that now, ya hear? It’s a ways away. No use. And besides,” he bent back over his work, “I’m nothing like Dad.”

Anna, with the quiet of a fairy princess, appeared in their doorway.

“I’m going for a swim, would either of you mind to accompany me?” Both heads turned sharply. “It’s just the waters get so rough so mummy doesn’t like me to go alone. And Cas is being a bore and refusing to come along.”

Sam suppressed a snort and looked away. Dean, however, dropped his muskets with a clatter.

“I’ll come along, miss, if you’d like.” Anna’s eyes glittered, just slightly.

“No, I’d not mind at all. I’ll get my costume, meet you in the great hall in ten.” She barely finished speaking before she left. Sam turned back to Dean.

“You can’t let them treat you like that. You’re not a dog at their beck and call.”

“Bugger off, Sammy.”

It was a perfect day for swimming, crisp and warm. Anna had wanted to go for the sole goal of cooling off, but soon found she loved the magic of it on its own. She pulled her head underwater and let her eyes take in the blue green waters of the river. She mostly let herself lie in a backstroke, but Dean beside her was taking a more adventurous route, and she couldn’t deny to enjoy watching him do flips or strong long strokes, splashing about in the water with a sort of childlike joy. She once treaded beside him, meeting his green eyes, and smiling, his eyes following her as well.

“You don’t look much like your brother,” he remarked casually.

“Gabe? We have the same eyes.”

“No, Cas,” he responded. “I always thought he looked like a stranger amongst you all.

“He’s just the baby is all,” Anna said.

“He didn’t seem to get the looks either. I mean, you’re far prettier.” Anna blushed. “And those blue eyes…” Dean trailed off. Anna watched him curiously, something she hadn’t expected to find in his eyes lingering there, and then she swam a little closer.

“What do you do...when we’re all gone?” Anna said cautiously. “I mean at school.”

Dean seemed to consider, slowing his treading and drawing dirty blonde hair from his eyes.

“Wait for you all to get back, I suppose,” he told her. And she worked hard to keep the smile out of her eyes.

Soon they went to go and were drying themselves off when she said something softly, so softly he had to ask her to say it again.

“If I drowned, would you save me?” She asked curiously. He toweled off his hair.

“Of course,” he replied, pulling on his shirt that stuck to wet skin. “Now, we better be getting back. Clean up before your cousins get here.” Dean started to head off but when he turned back to look for her she was gone. He looked at her towel, left lying on the bank of the river, and then at the unbroken waters in a panic. Pulling his shirt back off, he ran towards the water and dove in, finding her sinking just below the waves. Her red hair pooled about her face, swimming cap forgotten this time, and she thought she must look like a mermaid, or Ophelia. Her movements were calm, his panicked. He grabbed her around the torso and pulled her up. As soon as she felt his grip she could immediately tell how strong he was, hands as rough as his voice. His legs kicked hard and soon both their heads broke the water with a gasp, Anna coughing for air. She was held still in his arms and nearly carried to shore. He held her in his arms, bridal for just a moment, and then put her down. When she looked up, his eyes were clouded with anger.

“You stupid girl! What possessed you?” Dean accused harshly.

“I wanted to see if you’d really save me.”

“You could’ve died. We could’ve both died!” He practically barked it at her, and she took a step back.

“You saved my life now,” he started to walk off, not looking at her. “I’ll be eternally grateful.”

“Let’s get back to the house. Before your mother worries.” Anna followed him, wrapping herself in her towel.

“I’m not a little girl anymore,” she muttered. But if he heard he paid it no mind.

Dean and Anna split when they reached the house with her heading up to her bedroom and him heading to his room to continue his work. On his way he was stopped by Cas who it seemed was waiting for him.

“You took her swimming,” Cas said quietly. Dean quirked an eyebrow.

“She said she couldn’t go alone. You’re an awful brother to not go with her,” he replied.

“Well excuse me but she can’t exactly always have what she wants,” Cas turned up his nose. “She’s a spoiled brat.”

“Oh that I know,” Dean snorts.

“You think I am too?”

“No,” said Dean and then grinned, “just a little stuck up perhaps.”

“That’s very rude to say.”

“Oh well...guess I’m rude,” Dean softened slightly. “What did you wanna ask me?”

“I didn’t want to ask you anything.”

“What were you waiting here for then,” asked Dean, “if not for me?”

“Not everything is about you,” Cas said. “I don’t know why I even bothered.”

“So it is about me?”

“What do you mean?” Cas looked flustered.

“Well clearly you bothered with me.”

“Stop being smart,” Cas was again turning red. Dean let himself soften.

“What is it?” He looked into those icy blue eyes that never seemed to be able to hold his gaze.

“When I was at Cambridge,” Cas spoke slowly, as if his tongue was a weight in his mouth, “I wrote you letters. Quite a few actually.” He paused as if he wanted Dean to say something back but instead he just kept staring at him. “And you um, you never wrote back. My first year, you wrote me a little. But this year...I wrote and wrote, all three terms. I never got a single response.”

A long awful silence sat between them.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Just an explanation I suppose,” Cas nearly mumbled it. “Did I do something to offend you?”

“No.”

“Then what?” Dean sighed heavily and Cas shifted his weight.

“I was just right busy is all.” Cas studied him as he said it.

“Right.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.” Dean wanted to say something else, anything else. But he had nothing to say. “I gotta clean myself up, before the guests get here. They’ll need me handling their bags.” He walked off. Cas followed him with his eyes, but remained standing where he was.

“Dean…” he said softly and something in Dean, a voice he was usually quite adept at keeping quiet, seemed to scream at him to turn around, but his steps didn’t even slow.

The cousins arrived less than an hour later, standing in the middle of the great hall like three lost little lambs. The oldest, Ruby was dressed smartly in wide red slacks that sat high on her hips and a dusty brown blouse. The two little fat faced twins, Alfie and Sammy, were in matching sailor suits. Cas and Anna were there to greet all three with hugs, Anna kissing both of Ruby’s cheeks. Their mother, Naomi, stood stiffly behind them, a charming smile on her face that never seemed to fully reach her eyes. Charles, their father, was still at work in London.

“Get their bags,” Mrs.Milton called to Dean, who went to work on carrying the trunks upstairs. “It’s lovely to have all three of you here.”

“We’re very fortunate for you taking us in,” Ruby said, “ow!” She yelped as one of the twins pinched her thigh. “They’re such little devils.”

“Mummy runs a tight ship, we’ll be sure to keep them in line,” Anna snarked.

“Don’t be cheeky, Anna,” her mother responded. Anna’s shoulders sunk ever so slightly.

“Are these them?” Sam had just wandered into the room and all heads turned to him.

“We apologize for Mister Winchester, he usually knows not to barge into family matters,” said Naomi hurriedly.

“He was just saying hello, mummy,” Cas said quietly. “I don’t think there’s much of a problem.”

“Is he one of the help?” Ruby asked.

“No, I um, my brother Dean is, I just live here,” Sam responded, staying as cool as he could.

“He attends Oxford with me, he’s studying law,” Anna added. “Father pays for it.” Ruby walked over to him.

“I’m Ruby,” she said, offering her his hand. He took it with a smile.

“I know. I’m Samuel. But I go by Sam.” He shook her hand even though it had seemed by the way she held it out that she had been asking for him to kiss it. He winked as he met her eyes.

“My little brother’s name is Sammy, seems it’ll get awful confusing,” Ruby told him. “Though you are much bigger than him.”

“He’ll grow I expect.”

“Not to your height. You’re practically a giant,” Ruby joked and Sam laughed good naturedly. Naomi walked over to them.

“Ruby, dear, let’s show you about, our rooms are upstairs,” she took her arm as she spoke and led her away. Ruby cast another backwards glance at Sam as she was led off, hurrying the twins in front of her. Anna followed her cousin with her eyes and strode up to take her other arm. Ruby was young, she thought, and a flirtation like that wouldn’t do her any good.

_The next day…_

Cas had just come in from a walk about the grounds. He loved, though he would rarely deign to admit it to anyone, to get up early and feel the sun on his skin and be alone amongst the flowers and bees of their family’s estate. It was simpler and easier, he thought, than any of his studies at school and while he loved books and learning, he would trade it all away for this. When he lay among the wildflowers, the parts of the garden not kept pristine by his mother’s iron fist, he could close his eyes and picture himself out somewhere up north, maybe even in Scotland or Ireland, where no one knew his name. He’d have a little land, miles from any town and a cottage with just a few rooms. He wouldn’t have to think about much more than getting from day to day, tending his chickens and his garden and maybe keeping a few bees, selling honey and eggs and such in town once a week. It was a fantasy, he knew that, he’d never done any sort of labor in his life. But it was a nice daydream. He’d gather wildflowers and imagine they were to brighten up his house, make it nice and pretty before...before someone got home that evening, smelling of forest and wet mud and sweat. Someone who might wrap him up in gentle arms and ask if he had dinner ready on the table. There was always this someone with him, in the cottage fantasies, but he made sure to not let it go on long enough to see their face.

That day he had gathered a bundle of wildflowers and was running back to the house, catching what little a breeze he could in the stagnant summer air. As he stumbled past the great hall into the parlor, he saw Dean Winchester hanging about.

“Don’t you have some work to do?” He asked him as he arranged the flowers in the vase. Dean snorted.

“Who are the flowers for?” He asked. “Ruby?”

“Not a chance, she can’t take her eyes off your brother,” Cas replied.

“Won’t come to any good that,” Dean huffed.

“You don’t know that.”

“Don’t be naive, Cas.” Cas turned to Dean.

“Roll me a cigarette? Would you?” Dean smirked.

“Is that an order?” Cas blushed.

“A request. Please.”

“Then alright,” Dean pulled his papers out of his pocket and started on it, “your brother getting back today?”

“Yes, he’s bringing a friend. Some chocolate millionaire he met, named Ketch.”

“Worth anything?” Dean asked, finishing the cigarette and passing it to him.

“Dunno. He’s for Anna, I think. But she’s so particular, I doubt she’ll like him.” Cas put the cigarette to his lips and leaned in close. Carefully, Dean pulled open his lighter and lit it, noticing the way the flame lit up those ever icy blue eyes. Cas turned his face away and took a puff.

“You’re particular too,” Dean said.

“And you’re not. Or so I hear from the maids,” Cas retorted. “Yet you still wouldn’t answer my letters.”

“I’m more particular with friends than sweethearts,” said Dean. “And I assume you fall in the former category.” Cas blushed.

“Obviously.” Cas picked up the vase, the cigarette was put out suddenly and forgotten. Dean sniggered.

“Don’t get all flustered.”

“You’re a bastard.” Cas headed out the door and across the lawn to the fountain. Dean followed him, a pace behind.

“How am I a bastard?”

“You don’t write to me and now you tease me!” Cas yelled harshly.

“Oh, please. It was just a little fun. And I told you, I had nothing to say. I don’t know why you even wrote.” Cas turned into Dean as they reached the fountain.

“You know perfectly well why.” His voice shook with emotion.

“I do?” Dean raised an eyebrow.

“I’m your friend,” said Cas. “We’ve been friends since we were children.”

“Now you’re my employer actually.” Dean’s eyes were hard. Cas stooped to fill the vase with water.

“Oh forget it.” Dean went over to him, inserting his hands onto the vase.

“Let me, here.” He said but instead of grasping the vase he managed to knock it from Cas’s hands, as it fell it hit the edge of the fountain, the handle breaking off and falling in, the rest of the vase falling to the ground. Cas sprang back and looked up.

“You idiot!” Dean smiled slightly at the other man’s furious face. “You realize that’s probably the most valuable thing we own?”

“Not now it isn’t,” Dean replied. Cas could have screamed at him. Dean went for the buttons of his shirt, but Cas beat him to it. He briskly kicked off his shoes and socks and then unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it over his head, revealing his undershirt. Dean laughed. “Oh come on Cas you don’t have to.”

But Cas continued, not paying him any mind and kicking off his pants until he was in only his underclothes. Then, quickly, and avoiding eye contact, he jumped in the fountain. It was colder than he expected, and biting. But once under, he could open his eyes and quickly found the handle. He swam up slowly, wanting to relish the brief peace under the water. When he broke the water, Dean was still staring at him. He pulled himself up and stood on the edge of the fountain and stared down at him. He felt a sort of electricity running through his veins, like if he stood there a moment longer he might entirely burst into flames. A small voice at the back of his head, the voice he tried not to usually listen to, told him that fire like that wouldn’t kill him. That embracing it may be the only thing that could save him. But instead he jumped off the fountain’s edge, grabbed his clothes and the vase, stuffed the flowers back in, and began to storm back towards the house. Ignoring the feeling of Dean’s gaze on him.

Dean watched him go and as Cas disappeared into the house, Dean turned back to the fountain. The water, normally still as a reflecting pool, was upset, gently he let his hand touch it, gliding it right where Cas had come from. The water soothed his calloused hands and briefly, he exhaled.

Later that day, once Cas had dried off, he found himself running down to the great hall to greet his older brother Gabriel. He was standing there in the center, wearing a cream colored linen suit, the jacket slung over his shoulder with one hand, and a boater placed jauntily on his head. Behind him, in a light blue suit, was a dapper looking man about Gabriel’s age, he had a glint in his eyes that would have been charming, if there wasn’t a hardness in his face that made Cas stop in his tracks. This, he assumed, must be Arthur Ketch. He turned his attention back to his brother and smiled.

“Gabe. We missed you.”

“Cassie!” He extended his arms and the child in Cas let him leap into them. Cas had grown taller than Gabe in recent years and he couldn’t spin him around like when he was younger, but he still wrapped him tightly in his arms. After a few seconds, he let him go.

“I wish you’d come up earlier.”

“Work, the call of the city, an engagement at the opera. Came as soon as I could get away. Where’s Anna?”

“Upstairs, still writing, as usual.” Gabriel grinned.

“Of course. Regular Mary Shelley,” he stepped back and gestured to his friend. “Cas, may I introduce you to a good friend of mine, Arthur Ketch? This is my kid brother Castiel, he just finished his second year at Cambridge.”

“A pleasure,” said Ketch, shaking his hand, “though I thought you were all Oxford men in your family?”

“We are, Cas is the black sheep it seems,” said Gabe grinning. “Found out that Forster was a Cambridge man and got his heart set on going there.”

“You like Forster?” Ketch asked him. “He’s the chap who wrote the book about the girl in Italy right? And that other one about one of the colonies?”

“India, it was about India,” Cas clarified. “He’s my favorite writer. Howards End, it’s a book you don’t forget.”

“I assume you’re reading English at college then?”

“Yes,” said Cas.

“And he took a first too.” Gabriel told him with pride.

“My, my, keep it up,” Ketch laughed. At the top of the stairs, Anna appeared.

“Cas you didn’t tell me he got here!” Anna called. She stood there in a light green dress, looking lovely as ever.

“Don’t shout Anna, otherwise mummy will come running in,” Gabriel said, walking over to greet her. Anna headed down the steps and let him hug her. “You look well. Smarter and prettier than when I last saw you. I suppose it’s what Oxford does to a girl. Isn’t she worldly?”

“Introduce me to your friend,” Anna said.

“Arthur, this is Miss Anna Milton, Anna this is Arthur Ketch,” Gabriel said.

“Lovely to meet you,” Ketch said to Anna and kissed her hand.

“A pleasure,” Anna responded.

“Can we have someone get our bags?” Ketch asked.

“Get Dean to do, he’s probably lazing about somewhere,” Anna said. And Gabriel called for him. Dean ran in and began at their bags. Ketch eyed him critically.

“Don’t you have a valet to do that?” Ketch questioned.

“We’re a bit short staffed at the moment,” Gabe admitted.

“Oh right, I’ve heard how your father hasn’t been the most prudent with money in recent years.” The three siblings stiffened.

“What do you do, Mister Ketch?” Anna asked to break the tension, knowing the answer anyway.

“I make chocolate,” Ketch responded, lighting up the way proud men do when asked about their livelihood. “You can try some later if you like.”

“You brought it?”

“Oh, I bring it everywhere.”

“What room are you placing him in, sir?” Dean asked awkwardly, his voice sounding rough and out of place among them.

“Put him in the blue room,” Gabriel said, “And I’m in my old room. Of course.”

“Right sir.” Dean headed out of the room.

“He’s a bit of a clunky fellow, isn’t he?” Ketch remarked.

“Oh just you wait and see,” Gabe laughed. “Well, why don’t we three take a swim before dinner, ought to cool us down. If we don’t I think I’ll die in this heat.”

“Yes please,” Cas said.

“May I come?” Anna asked.

“No girls allowed,” Gabe quipped. “Go help mummy with something.”

“You’re terrible.”

“I know.”

By the river all three men were in bathing costumes. Ketch and Gabriel lay out in lawn chairs, sunbathing. Cas, on the other hand, was busy in the water, never feeling more like someone’s kid brother than in that moment as he seemed to splash about like a child just a ways off.

“My father pays for the younger one to go to Oxford, see,” Gabriel was explaining to the Winchesters to a rapt Ketch.

“How fascinating.”

“He wants to be, what a barrister?”

“A solicitor,” Cas called back.

“Yes, we always knew Sam was brilliant, even when he was young. Father took an interest and has seen him through his whole education.”

“And the older brother,” Ketch asked, adjusting his sunglasses carefully. Gabe snorted.

“A waste of time.”

“Don’t say that!” Cas said from the water, the strange fire tickling at his nerves again.

“Oh you know it’s true, Cas. Don’t be wet.” Gabe turned to Ketch. “Since he was a child he’s been nothing but a mindless oaf and a skirt chaser who can’t add two and two together to save his life and can be found heavy in his cups most evenings. Don’t get me wrong he’s a damn good gamekeeper, an excellent shot, and a truly decent fellow, but he’s not much more than that. Of course he couldn’t be expected to. Their father went to the Great War and came back all twisted up like they did. And to make matters worse, the mother died after having Sam. John Winchester, a fantastic gamekeeper himself, but he was a drunk and a bastard and we all knew it. Dean turning out even halfway decent is probably a miracle.”

“He’s done everything to care for Sam.” Cas quietly interjected. And he knew it, he’d seen it all growing up, Sam was Dean’s whole life. The only thing on earth he had any faith in.

“And it’ll pay off, Sam will certainly make something of himself, within the constraints of his station. But fellows like Dean, they don’t have any hope of advancement outside of a war.”

“Gabe, you don’t really think they’ll be a war?” Cas asked, treading towards the shore.

“Oh, anyone who doesn’t is going to look a fool in a year or two,” Ketch interjected casually. “I’ve been talking to a chap I know in the ministry of defense. Trying to figure out a way so that it’s my bars in the boys kits. I’d bet you anything, 3 years from now, at most, that Winchester boy will be sitting in a trench in Germany taking a bite out of one of my brand new “amo bars.””

“That’s an awful thing to say,” Cas responded sourly.

“Sorry I’m not in the habit of lying about things like the dons are at Cambridge,” Ketch had a sharpness in his voice that again reminded Cas of his hard face in the great hall earlier. “Get it in your head, we’re heading for a war. The only thing we can do now is to find a way to make it a prosperous venture for us.”

“You mean make money off if it?”

“Is that such a crime? Money’s not a dirty thing.”

“It’s low class is what it is,” Cas said primly. “I’ve had enough of this disgusting talk. And besides, daddy says there won’t be any war. He’s sure of it. Chamberlain will keep us out of it.”

“That’s bosh,” Ketch laughed.

“Even if there was one, it would be resolved quickly, he says. Not like the last one,” Cas had heard his father spend many a dinner over holidays detailing his opinions to him. It had been the only time he’d truly felt like his son, like he had any attention paid to him amidst Gabriel’s antics and Anna’s brain and looks. “And it certainly won’t reach English soil.”

“If that’s what helps you sleep at night,” said Ketch, lighting himself a cigarette.

“Cas, don’t be such a little daddy’s boy,” Gabe chimed in grinning.

“You’re both disgusting,” Cas spat, and flipped back under the water. It wasn’t as clear as the fountain, but he had the same calm as before, like he could stay there forever.

After swimming, the three men dried off and headed back to the house to clean up before dinner. The house had entered into the type of calm that fell about in a late summer afternoon. The only activity seemed to come from the room where the cousins were staying. The twins were running circles around a hysterical who had lost her patience a while ago.

“Why can’t we go home?” Alfie was shrieking over and over as Sammy cried in the corner. Ruby grabbed his arm fiercely.

“We can’t go home! We have to be happy we’re here!” She shouted back. “Now shut up and be grateful you little monster!” Sammy bit into her arm and she yelped and then turned around to slap him, losing her grip on Alfie, who kicked her in the shin. She tumbled to the floor. When she looked up, Arthur Ketch was standing there.

“Hello,” said Ketch softly. “What have we here?”

“Hello,” Ruby attempted to right herself and straighten herself out. “I’m Ruby.”

“I’ve heard,” he said genially. “I’m Arthur Ketch, and these must be Alfred and Samuel.” Ruby pulled her brothers to her.

“Alfie and Sammy,” she said. “And perfect beasts both of them.”

“Yes, I saw your little struggle earlier, I do hope you’re alright,” he told her.

“I’m fine.”

“Good,” he paused, “though I find chocolate is the best medicine.” Alfie’s eyes perked up.

“Chocolate?” Ketch reached into his suit jacket for three bars and handed them to the children. Alfie and Sammy eagerly unwrapped them.

“How do you have that?” Sammy asked.

“Don’t be a dolt Sammy, he owns a chocolate factory,” Ruby said.

“It’s only the beginning for us, but soon, if I’m lucky, these might truly be everywhere,” he smiled. Ruby considered the chocolate in her hand. “Well go on.”

She unwrapped the chocolate slowly and looked at it. Ketch stepped in slightly closer to her.

“Bite it. You have to bite it.” Ruby looked at him curiously with her dark brown eyes, and then did as she was told. The chocolate was hard and sweet, not powdery but rich and nice. “If they ever give you trouble again, you come to me, alright?”

“I can take of myself,” Ruby told him. But he was already gone.

Below, in his rooms, Dean had a moment alone and had torn a piece of paper out of one of Sam’s notebooks. His handwriting was bad and his prose even worse, but he had been attempting to scratch something out. He knew how he’d behaved to Cas earlier and try as he might to forget it, he felt incapable. There had been many attempts at an apology letter. But all felt either too intimate or not enough. A million different ways of saying “I’m sorry. I missed you. It hurt me too much to write. I don’t know why I act the way around you that I do” landed crumpled up in the wastepaper basket. He wished he could ask Sam for help, but he couldn’t tell a single living soul about this. There was something in Dean too, some fire like what Cas had felt at the fountain. He did a better job at smothering it, but lying on his bed he knew it was eating him alive. In a sudden rush he pulled out a fresh piece of paper and smoothed it out.

 _Cas_ , he wrote hurriedly, _in my dreams I kiss your cock, your sweet hard cock. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long. Dean._

The words stare down at him. A barefaced accusation. He should burn it but there’s such a note of truth, more truth than he’s ever been able to put into words perhaps his whole life. So instead he folds it carefully and lets it lie by the foot of his bed. He sets about another apology, a proper one. One with things like “Dear Cas, you’ve been my best friend for years and it scares me how much I care. I never should treat you the way I do. I’d do anything to make things right.” Awful, vulnerable things, but not criminal. When he was done, he folded it as well, fetched an envelope, grabbed a paper from his bed and put it in writing _Castiel_ in the best script he could manage on the cover. As he was picking it up, Sam walked in.

“Whatcha doin?” Sam asked.

“Nothing Sammy,” he said, tossing the other paper into the wastepaper basket quickly.

“You sure?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Gabriel asked me to join them for dinner,” Sam said.

“Good for you.”

“I won’t do it,” Sam said sharply.

“Not even to see Miss Ruby?” Dean questioned enjoying Sam’s discomfort.

“I don’t know.” Dean grinned at him.

“Do yourself a favor Sammy, go right ahead. The Bolsheviks won’t get you for one measly dinner.” And with that Dean strode out into the hallway. He looked about anxiously, until he caught sight of Anna crossing between rooms. He signaled to her quietly, and while at first she looked reticent she eventually met him.

“What is it?”

“Can you give this to Cas?” He said, holding out the letter, she took it gingerly.

“What is this?”

“It’s nothing. Just give it to him. Please.”

“Do it yourself,” she attempted to pass it back, he pushed it back to her.

“Please. Come on pal, I can’t do it myself.” His green eyes pleaded and she sighed and took it.

“But you owe me one,” she grinned and headed up the steps. With relief he went back to his room, Sam had gone into the bathroom to change into his tuxedo. He reached into the bin to pull out the paper from before, straightening it out so as to keep it. The words stared back at him. It was the apology letter, the respectable letter. His stomach sunk faster than it ever had before he knew there was only one place the other letter could be. He darted out to the hallway, sweating, but by then Anna was gone. Dean stood there, sick to his stomach and shaking. It was a joke, that’s what he’d say. A cruel, stupid joke. And sure, he’d lose Cas’s friendship, the very thought made him want to weep more than he had since childhood, but at least he wouldn’t be arrested.

“Why’d you like so green?” Sam said, emerging from the bathroom, and Dean simply moved his face away and gruffly told him off.

As she stood on the staircase to her room Anna tore open the letter. The words stared down at her. Yelling at her. _Your sweet, hard cock_. And to her brother! From Dean Winchester! She would throw up if she didn’t scream. Instead she merely stood there. Glued to the floor. She didn’t know what to do next, it had to be a careful move. She could give it to Cas, see what happened, or even better, to their mother, it might win her at the very least a smile, but no that would end up being her fault somehow she was sure. She could simply burn it, end whatever was happening at the source. Or she could wait. She decided on this as the surest option and went back to her room. It was only a few minutes later before Ruby came in.

“May we talk?” Ruby asked and Anna nodded.

“Of course.”

“I’m all shook up I think. I feel so pathetic but I am.”

“What’s the matter, dear?” Anna asked and Ruby came to sit on her bed beside her.

“Oh a million things I think. The twins won’t leave me alone, they gave my arms chinese burns and when I hit them they just hit back! They blame everything on me, as if I’m the villain. As if I’m the reason mother and father can’t stay together. And mother and father made me go here, instead of with my friends and then…” Ruby trailed off, “And then there’s how the Winchester boy can’t take his eyes off me!” Anna’s eyebrows quirked.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t know. I don’t _know_. Mother would certainly say it was. But I…” Ruby looked around nervously, “sometimes I think I’m really wicked Anna, really I do. Like something lives in me that shouldn’t. And I’m not even ashamed of it, I _like_ it. And last night, out on the lawn, I saw Sam. And we spoke and somehow I told him about that. And he sort of grinned and said he’s always felt the same. Only he...he _is_ afraid of it. And it sort of just made me feel worse.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to get entangled with that family.” Anna said sharply.

“What do you mean? Because they’re servants?” Anna leaned in to her cousin.

“Ruby, what’s the worst thing you can think of?”

“I don’t know, murder?” Anna rolled her eyes and pushed the letter towards her.

“Look at this.” Ruby scanned the brief letter with her eyes and put a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

“Holy!”

“I know!”

“Is this how people behave when they get older?”

“Certainly not,” Anna said.

“He sounds like a sex maniac,” Ruby couldn’t hide the excitement in her voice.

“Worse,” Anna added, “an _invert_.”

“Like Noel Coward! Father met him once and told me about it.” Ruby’s mother had been furious at that and forced her from the table. But she had heard enough. “What do you think Cas will do?”

“I don’t know, call the police?” Anna leaned back on her bed.

“So you are going to give it to him?” Ruby questioned. “I mean I would, just to see what he does.”

“Oh, yes of course,” said Anna, her mind made up.

“He said he thought about it “all day long,”” Ruby didn’t even have words for how that made her feel.

“You can’t tell anyone Ruby.” Anna told her firmly.

“Oh of course not.”

“He might hurt you.”

“I won’t tell a living soul,” Ruby swore it solemnly.

“Good,” said Anna. “Now we should both clean up before dinner.” Ruby stood up and headed towards the door then turned back.

“Thanks, Anna, you’re a brick.” She flashed a grateful smile and headed out.

Cas was fixing his bowtie when a paper slid under his door. The sound of soft footsteps disappearing, convinced him it was his sister. He grabbed it in his hands and the words shot at him like bolts into his heart, like Christ nailed to the fucking cross. He wouldn’t have, he realized, needed Dean to have signed the letter to know it was from him. He’d have known by instinct, from the handwriting, from the sent, from the very fact that this was something he’d been waiting for longer than he could remember even if he hadn’t known it himself.

He sank to his knees, still clutching the letter tight. He would come to his senses in a moment, he assumed. Be terrified that Anna saw it, that she showed it to who? Gabriel? Mummy? He couldn’t say. But in that moment, it was his. He had nothing else to worry about but those hilariously vulgar words. So simple there was no misconstruing. He had an urge to wring his hands and say “so that’s that.” It was all suddenly so simple.

 _I’ll go to Dean, I’ll tell him not to worry, that I won’t tell, but of course I can’t feel the same,_ he told himself, _I’ll say that we will simply never speak of it and do our best to stay friends. It’ll be simple._ But the words were false even in his head. That was a fantasy, this was the reality. Funny how those types of things could flip on a dime.

Cas finished dressing and made his way downstairs, avoiding everyone, sure that the whole world knew. _It must be written on my face,_ he thought. Like the fire had finally burned him and his face was disfigured in some awful way, like those men back from the war who won’t speak.

He found Dean in the hallway, in his tails for serving dinner. He always looked out of place like that, since they’d have to lay off some of the staff and expand his duties. The moment their eyes met Dean seemed to understand, and followed him, silently, into the private of the library. Cas held the letter out to Dean, who took it with quiet shame.

“Anna read it.” Cas said bluntly.

“She wasn’t supposed to. No one was,” Dean told him, shaking ever so slightly.

“I assumed that.”

“There was a real letter, it was an apology…” Dean couldn’t keep talking.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you,” Cas wanted to run but Dean stood right in front of him and he knew he was going nowhere.

“I’m very sorry for all of this,” Dean started and Cas found himself shaking his head.

“I don’t want you to be sorry.”

“But I should be.”

“Please, don't be sorry. “

“I get so angry at you sometimes. And I don’t know why. It just eats me alive.”

“I get angry like that too, like I don’t have the words for what it is but…” he tried to force himself to keep talking, to spit it out. He couldn’t stop then, not when he was so close. “Sometimes I feel like you’re going to burn me alive.”

“Burn you alive?”

“It’s not funny.” Cas looked indignant. His blood began rushing to his head, maybe it was all a joke, a misunderstanding.

“I don’t think it’s funny,” said Dean and Cas realized quite suddenly he was crying.

“I have to get to dinner.” Cas meant to wipe at his face but found he couldn’t move a muscle.

“Why are you crying?” Dean’s voice was low.

“Don’t you know?”

“Yes, I do.” And he kissed him. And _oh_ , thought Cas, _this was the fire all along_.

Anna had been sent to find Cas for dinner.

“He stepped into the library I think,” Gabe had told her with a shrug. “If he’s caught in some book and wants to miss supper that’s his funeral.”

She had checked herself in a mirror in the hallway. She had managed to get her red hair up in a twist. Her evening dress was a light blue silk and she hoped that maybe, just maybe, she looked presentable enough her mother would resist any snide comments she had stored away. _I’m just like ice_ , she’d thought, and liked the idea.

She hadn’t known what to feel or do when she stepped into the library. At first it seemed to be two figures in the dark, one thrusting against the next, their wrists in the other’s hands. With the light pouring in through the door, the figures began to reveal themselves. It was then she heard a soft and breathless voice whisper:

“Someone’s come in,” and Anna could know her baby brother’s voice anywhere. That was when it became clear what she was seeing. Cas, Cas and Dean Winchester in the library and they were...they were...she felt very crazed and then very calm all at once.

“Castiel?” Anna’s voice pierced through the darkness and then Dean’s head turned to her. The rest seemed to happen like something in the cinema. Cas quickly pulled himself together and hurried past her, red faced and terrified. Dean, however, dressed slower. Her eyes met his in the darkness, that warm shade of mossy green. And then he left the room, his mouth set hard, and she was left alone in the darkness once again.

It wasn’t that she had loved Dean Winchester. In fact, she didn’t truly think of him at all when he wasn’t around. But he had looked at her, really looked at her as if he was seeing a person and that had meant more, she realized as she stood in the dim light of the library, than she could have possibly imagined. That she had entertained, if only for a moment, a fantasy of this being the start of any sort of story with her at the center, as opposed to merely the far off and objective narrator, and that Dean had been the key to that story only made her feel sick with shame.

She had always thought that if any of her siblings were to have an adventure, were to rebel, it would be her. She had borne the brunt of their mother’s criticism for years. She had been the one with the liberal ideas on women’s lives and on being a writer and it was her who spoke her mind and took risks and always felt ever so slightly on the outside of things, an observer to her own life, noticing the truth no one else would acknowledge. It wouldn’t be Gabe, she knew that, he was too gamesome and vapid, too in love with their life. Sure, he’d never be the serious scholar daddy had wanted him to be, but he’d also eventually care for the estate as he was expected to. And it couldn’t be Cas either, who was meek and obedient and afraid of his own shadow, doing whatever mummy and daddy asked of him and never looking at anything larger than himself. It had to be her, she had decided years ago, at the very least as a sort of reward for being overlooked or over-criticized or underestimated.

But then, in the library, with the rug ripped out under her the solid understanding came in that she was not this story’s heroine. She was barely a supporting player. A drama was playing out around her, sure, one great and lurid and it was Cas who was its ingenue. Simple, plain, shy and unassuming Cas who everyone agreed was a good boy and would do well with his life but there wasn’t much more to say of him than that, he had stolen her story from her. And she had nothing left to do than fix her face and head back in for dinner.

After dinner, it was Anna who discovered the note the twins had discarded on the table in the parlor and set the house into a tizzy. Everyone had expected Ruby to burst into tears after finding a letter where her little brothers wrote both how much they hated her and that they were running off into the woods in the middle of the night. Both Sam and Ketch had been at her side within moments, instead she had looked bored and had said they were probably just hiding somewhere in the house itself.

“I’m alright, I don’t need to be comforted,” Ruby said, shrugging Ketch’s arm off her shoulder, “honestly we’re making such a fuss over nothing. They’ll turn up when they’re hungry.”

“Still better safe than sorry,” said Gabe who was trying to be father in Mister Milton’s absence. “We should all split up and look for them, cover more ground that way. Cas, you’re with me.”

“Alright,” Cas agreed, though Anna could tell from the way his eyes flitted that he would have far preferred to go with the gamekeeper.

Anna was left to search on her own, having separated from the bored Ruby as they set out. She held her torch out in front of her, letting the pale yellow light dance across the dark lawns. Creeping through the darkness of the well pruned grass, she suddenly slipped, and landed on her knees. She looked down, the lovely silk of her dress was stained from the grass and her knees were almost certainly skinned. She could already hear her mother’s words when she returned to the house. As she rose and collected herself, the torch in her hand hit upon two figures in an entirely different darkness and she shined it back, quickly, for a moment she wondered, with revulsion, if it was Dean and her brother yet again but soon it became clear it was quite a different story.

It was Ruby, she made the girl and her red dress out right away. Ruby with her skirts hiked up behind her back and _some man_. Some man was gripping her tightly and roughly. Anna felt herself drop the torch before she could pick it back up, the man was gone. Ruby looked out at her with her large brown eyes and she quickly ran to her.

“Anna,” said Ruby, voice raw and frightened. Anna took her tightly by the arm.

“Who was it?” Anna asked and Ruby stared back in shock.

“He put his hands over my eyes I didn’t see! I didn’t!” Anna had an urge to slap Ruby to make her stop rambling and talk sense. The calm from before was taking over her and a voice told her something crystal clear, _if I cannot be the heroine of this story, then I can at least be the villain_.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” Anna said and Ruby shook her head.

“It wasn’t Sam, it couldn’t be! He didn’t feel tall enough and he wouldn’t…” she trailed off into sobs.

“Not Sam,” Anna took a breath. “Dean. It was Dean.”

“You saw him?” Anna could tell just from Ruby’s asking that she would believe her.

“He’s an invert and a sex maniac, of course it was him. I saw him earlier, attacking my little brother in the library. I don’t know what he would have done if I hadn’t come in when I did.” Ruby was sobbing again and so Anna attempted to soothe her, to rub her back and make her quiet down.

“But did you see him?” Ruby asked her again and Anna nodded, firmly.

“Plain as day. I grew up with him. I know it was him.” Anna met her cousin's eyes. “I’ll tell them, they’ll believe me. Don’t worry at all. It’s going to be alright.”

Anna found Gabriel who carried Ruby back to the house and quickly called for a doctor and a police inspector. Soon the rest of the party began filing back into the house. Ketch came by, and then her mother and then Sam, who demanded to see Ruby, who had been shepherded back to her bedroom, and was denied by Gabriel in harsh terms that frightened him. Cas was the last back and once the situation was quietly explained to him by his mother in hissed terms, he grew quite pale, and seemed to sink numbly into the sofa, wringing his hands desperately.

Anna slipped upstairs in the confusion and took the letter from Cas’s room where she knew he must have stashed it after the library rendezvous was interrupted. She knew how to pick the lock, always had. The letter lay on his bed and she passed it to Naomi’s waiting hand outside.

“I shouldn’t have read it,” Anna said.

“No, but you’re doing the right thing showing it to me now, especially before the police arrive.” Naomi’s voice was steady and exact. “You’ll tell them of the contents, I’ll vouch I saw it as well, but they can’t get their hands on it, do you understand me?”

“Yes, mummy.”

It was near midnight when the police inspector arrived and Anna was shuffled in to speak with him.

“You saw him?” The man asked her and she nodded.

“It was dark,” she said. “But I knew it was him.”

“You knew it was him?” The inspector asked again. Anna glanced back at her mother, who was standing in the room with her, a manicured hand gently on her shoulder. Naomi nodded down at her with encouragement.

“He’s...he’s engaged in behaviors, in the past, that would make it seem he had that capacity, mummy should I…” again she looked at Naomi.

“Tell him darling, it’s alright,” Naomi said and then looked at the inspector. “She’s taken a bit of a fright is all. The details may be, slightly murky, names, people etcetera. But I’m sure she remembers Dean Winchester’s part in what she’s trying to say.” Anna understood her mother’s request.

“He’s always been a flirt. Messing about with girls in the village, and with our maids. There was an incident with a school chum of mine when we were young in fact, Cassandra, but it was all resolved,” Anna took a breath. “It was today that I understood the full extent of his depravity. I found a letter he had written detailing...desires, for another man. I don’t know to who. But then I found him in the library with someone, just tonight, some man...I don’t want to say any more…”

“If he’s capable of that, it doesn’t seem so strange he would be capable of interfering with a child, now does it officer?” Naomi said and the inspector took it down in his notebook.

“This is still just circumstantial, I need you to be blunt with me, I know it must be painful for you, but Miss Milton, did you see him?”

“I knew it was him.”

“You knew it was him,” the inspector asked, “or you saw him?”

Anna stopped. Then she thought back to the memory and how easy it was to see Dean Winchester’s face over that of the man shrouded in darkness. He had seemed about his height and build. Who else could it even have been, if not Sam?

“I did. I saw him. I saw him with my own two eyes.” Anna exhaled as she said it and felt her mother give her shoulder an appreciative squeeze.

Cas was interviewed himself that night, as the last back to the house, and while he felt as though he were living in some sort of nightmare, he was stiff and composed for his interview.

“I don’t know if you should trust what my sister says. It was dark. An inky darkness tonight. You saw it. And she has a tendency to...embellish. She’s done it since we were children,” Cas paused. “I grew up with Dean Winchester, he’s my best friend and one of the best men I’ve ever known. He wouldn’t do a thing like this. Not ever, I’m sure of it. It’s not in his nature. You’d realize that if you spoke to him for just one second. He would never intentionally hurt another soul.”

Cas could tell before his testimony was finished that dots were being connected both from the inspector and his mother, whose grip on his own shoulder was getting tighter, and a part of him wanted to faint. They weren’t listening to him and the nightmare saw no sign of stopping.

Sam they interviewed as well and he found himself sweating like a pig.

“I would never touch her like that! And neither would Dean! We were both looking for the boys like everyone else!” He felt frantic and would have torn his own hair out if he could. “We split up at a fork in the woods, but we were in the woods, not the lawn, I swear it.” He could feel his own voice slipping back into the rougher tongues of his youth, and his cheeks were flushing with anxiety.

Cas was furious as they waited for Dean’s return; he had turned on Anna and his mother when they emerged from giving testimony and nearly scratched her if Gabe hadn’t pulled him off.

“I’ll kill you! You bitch! I’ll kill you!” Cas had screamed, straining against Gabe’s arms wrapped around him.

“Castiel! Control yourself!” Naomi had said and nodded her head as if he didn’t see the officers and their guest and the servants and everyone watching.

“I want them to see! I want them to hear! We all know the truth! And now I’m never going to shut up! Never!” He shrieked, aware of the scene, revelling in it. “You’re all hypocrites and liars!”

It had been after that he had collapsed, sobbing, into an armchair and Gabe had stayed with him, rubbing his back.

It was almost exactly 2 in the morning when Dean returned with Sammy and Alife holding his hands. The police were there to meet him, taking the children worriedly off his hands and surrounding him.

“What’s going on? I don’t understand?” He said over and over as the charges were read. Instincts kicked in, his father’s mistrust of the law and belief that any boy who couldn’t throw (and in many cases take) a punch was a nancy, and he found himself swatting at them. The world turned red and a part of him thought he might kill the policemen, really and truly right there with his bare hands and add murderer to the names they would call him. But Cas took that moment to run up, Sam following close behind.

“Dean! Please don’t make it worse!” He shouted, and then to the policemen: “Get your hands off him! He’s done nothing wrong.” One of the officers slowed down and looked at Dean.

“If he wasn’t the one who did it, the most likely suspect is the other Mister Winchester,” he said and Cas knew it was all hopeless from that point on. Dean seemed to go limp and barely noticed as he was handcuffed or that Sam had reached the car and began screaming himself raw.

“He’s got rights! You can’t just take him away, we were in the woods! I’m telling you!”

“Sammy, enough, please,” Dean said and something in his eyes quieted his brother. Dean was led into the car and as he was nearly in he felt Cas’s hand grabbed tightly to his lapel, getting in the way of the officer.

“This is all wrong,” Cas whispered.

“How else did you see this going?” Dean couldn’t help his joke and Cas looked at him desperately.

“Sir, you have to be getting back to the house,” the officer said but Cas couldn’t hear him. He had to stay he had to tell him, he brought his mouth close to Dean’s ear and whispered:

“I love you. Come back. Come back to me.”

Dean wanted to kiss him again, kiss his hand or his forehead or even his face, decency wouldn’t even stop him then. But his chance was lost and the officer had pulled Cas off of him and was holding him in place as another slammed the door shut and drove off. He worried that he had never had the chance to say it back, to assure Cas that he would come back to him as surely as he knew Cas would wait for him. But as the car drove off and he got his last look into those blue eyes, so trusting and gentle, he knew that was one thing he wouldn’t have to worry about.

Gabriel was sent to gently lead Cas back to the house. Cas felt he moved along numbly, like a child led up to bedtime. He was shepherded into one of the sitting rooms and the doors were closed behind him. Gabe helped him to sit on a sofa and from somewhere a blanket was procured to be wrapped around his shoulders and a cup of tea was put in hands that he drank from perfunctorily. He surveyed the room: Anna sat in an armchair across from him, her legs folded at the ankles, a piece of paper on her lap. His mother sat beside him and had a hand that was wiping at his sweaty hair. Gabe, however, had moved into the darkness of a corner and was drinking a glass of brandy with his back turned. Later, Cas would think that should have been a clue. He wanted to start protesting Dean’s innocence, to demand to be allowed to see him, to call them all hypocrites but instead he did nothing and just let himself sink numbly into the warmth of the sofa and the smell of his mother’s perfume. She put her hand to his forehead as if checking his temperature.

“Darling, you’re not very well,” Naomi said. “You’re burning up.”

“He’s under a load of blankets and it’s hot as blazes out, mummy,” Gabriel muttered.

“You should get to bed, quite soon, right as we finish, our little talk alright?” Naomi looked at him and Cas nodded weakly. “Castiel, Anna has told me some things that...well they distrubed me. And I telephoned your father, and they seemed to disturb him too. Now, there’s no need to rehash, or attempt to explain. It all feels quite clear to me, quite clear to all of us, that you aren’t well. And as you haven’t reached your majority yet, so in the eyes of the law your father and I are still your caretakers, we feel it’s our duty to do all we can to take care of you.”

The words hung around him and things began to become clearer but he couldn’t focus on anything, couldn’t let this be really happening. He wanted to wake up from the whole awful affair the night had been, go back to the library and Dean and the fire. Before Anna had ruined everything.

“I don’t understand...I’m not sick, I don’t think?” Cas felt like a child asking it. Naomi ran her hands through his hair again.

“Not physically, you’re not ill in that way if that’s what you mean,” his mother said and he tried to look Anna in the eye but she stared back at him so blankly she could have been a doll. “But ill...ill in your brain and your heart I think as well. And we’re worried, we’re very worried, and we want to make sure this is dealt with.”

“What do you mean dealt with? What needs to be dealt with?” Cas asked. At the back of the room Gabe emitted a small huff.

“We think it might be appropriate well, first of all, to have you placed under a conservatorship,” Naomi noticed the look of horror on his face and smiled at him gently, “Just for the time being angel, just until we know you’re not going to hurt yourself or anyone else.”

“Anyone else?”

“Darling, you...well you saw how you were tonight. You nearly scratched Anna, and you elbowed Gabriel in the face, the poor dear was bruised.” As if to demonstrate Gabriel briefly turned towards Cas, who noticed the blooming purple patch on his forehead. “And not to mention, the way you were yelling at the guests and the policemen, you were erratic. These aren’t the actions of someone of sound mind.”

“Do you think I’m insane?” Now it was all making sense and he had an urge to run but noticed, numbly, that the door had been locked behind him and besides where would he go? Dean was gone.

“Not insane, of course not sweetheart, not insane. But, perhaps you have an affliction, something treatable,” she paused, and dabbed his sweaty brow with her handkerchief. “You’re the baby of the family, all of us, we all want what’s best for you. You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Cas looked at his siblings furtively.

“Understand what? What are you doing?” Naomi sighed and took his hand.

“Cas, do you remember your cousin Ishim?” And Cas vaguely did, he was much older and had a harsh face, the son of one of mummy’s stepbrother’s from her father’s first marriage, he was more than twice his age. He was a doctor, he had remembered, vaguely. But of what he couldn’t remember. “He was sick too, very sick, when he was just about your age. And the family sent him away to rest and be cured and soon he was perfectly healthy, perfectly fine.”

“But I’m not sick.” Cas needed her to understand, if only now to finally hear him but her smile was thin and unfriendly.

“He was sick like you’re sick, but now he specializes in treating these things. He runs a…” she trailed off looking at Anna and Gabe as if to find the best word to say it.

“A sanatorium,” said Anna bluntly and his mother winced.

“A _restorative facility_ ,” she corrected, harshness creeping into her tone. “A home, more or less, in London. I’ve sent him a telegram, of course he hasn’t responded, it’s very late. But I’m sure he’ll be happy to take you on, they’re state of the art, very innovative, it’s quite fascinating. You’ll get the best treatment we can provide. And then you’ll be well, perhaps even by Christmas. And you can go back to Cambridge and all this will go away.”

“A sanatorium?” Cas tried the words out on his tongue.

“Only for a little while darling, think of it as a holiday.” He looked into his mother’s eyes and somehow knew there was nothing he could say to dissuade her. He was trapped.

“You’re going to have me declared insane so you can commit me because you think I’m going to cause a scandal over Dean.” And he didn’t hear her protestations that no, it was his best interests that they had at heart, that he was being irrational, that it had nothing to do with anyone but him and keeping him safe. He didn’t hear it because he seemed to have tunnel vision and a buzzing in his ears and he stood up, his blanket falling off his shoulders and took a step towards Anna who flinched and he wondered, in the back of his mind, if she was afraid of him. _She should be_ , he thought _, I’d strangle her with my bare hands. Probably see more emotion out of her then than I’ve seen her express her whole life._ The image of Anna begging for her life from him gave him some sort of sick pleasure.

He didn’t reach her though. Instead before he took another step, he felt himself slip and dark spots came to his eyes and he realized he was fainting. Gabe was running across the room towards him. Anna, as he saw in the corner of his eye, was still seated, still staring blankly with those doll-like eyes. His mother caught him in her arms and his head sunk into the creases of her skirt.

“He’ll come for me,” he practically hissed before his vision went dark.


	2. Summer to Fall, 1940

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for some context, the full stanza of the poem Cas references is "darkling I listen; and, for many a time/I have been half in love with easeful Death, /Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,/To take into the air my quiet breath; /Now more than ever seems it rich to die,/To cease upon the midnight with no pain,/While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad/In such an ecstasy!"  
> also yeah my ww2 facts aren't 100% accurate i think military history is a sham anyway so that's on that, also atonement itself puts the dunkirk evacuation in the wrong month for plot so i did it as well.  
> edit: realize i spelled benny's name wrong. fixed now. humiliating.

_ Five Years Later…  _

The barn seemed to be rotting, that was all Dean had been able to think during the first night they had spent there. It was three of them, hiding out up there, waiting for their next orders. They had all been dog tired but some part of Dean couldn’t sleep. Summer nights like that, for it was late in August, always reminded him of things he’d rather forget. He felt harder than he had been in 1935, like prison and heartbreak and war had given him an extra skin, one he hadn’t even known he needed because back then he had thought himself practically impenetrable. But here, here he knew how to be rock solid, just a robot of stone and dirt, and the real him, the one who had done things like play Cole Porter records or fall in love by fountains, was living there safely tucked away, ready to be taken out when he was needed. 

There wasn’t much safe space in him, he had to admit, most of it had already been poisoned and eaten away at. But he had carved out a little space for the things that mattered: Sammy, who still wrote him letters religiously, and Cas, whose face he hadn’t seen since that fateful evening, not even as a photograph. He had been afraid, at first, that he might forget him, so he had taken to memorizing every evening, in those early days in prison, exactly what he had looked like, reciting it to himself before he fell asleep like a creed. A part of him hissed that he was remembering the memory far more than the real man, but he thought that wasn’t true. He didn’t embellish the memory. Cas was plain, homely even, a face you never look at more than once. The only thing exceptional about him were his eyes, the icy blues that stared just a bit too deeply. He remembered the facts, he told himself. No more and no less.

Of the three of them holed up in that French barn Davies had been sent out to scout for food. He was a quick thinker and a good soldier, a cockney but surprisingly educated. He reminded Dean of Sam a bit. Left behind with Dean, was Lafitte, a cajun volunteer from Louisiana. His exoticism had worn off early in their relationship. In him Dean found a kindred spirit, he was a plain spoken man with a good sense of humor and a warm body at night. It had never gone farther than warm bodies though he knew Lafitte would have done more, but anything else would be too much of a betrayal. He hadn’t touched anyone like that since the library and he was keeping it that way. He was going to come back, he kept his word.

“Think he’ll be back soon?” Lafitte asked, breaking the silence. Dean turned from his quiet contemplation.

“‘Spect. Can’t be long. Hope he brings something to eat, I’m right starved,” Dean replied.

“You daydreaming over there?” Lafitte said and Dean huffed a small laugh.

“Nah, pondering maybe, but not daydreaming,” he confessed. “Don’t dream much anymore, days or otherwise.”

“Come on man, I see your face at night. Got a look like you have one pretty picture in your head,” Lafitte smiled as he spoke. “Lemme guess, got some pretty girl back in jolly old England or what not? Promised to marry her?”

“Didn’t come from nothing like that,” Dean said gruffly. “Haven’t seen an English girl in five years.”

“Holy! How you keeping, brother?” Lafitte asked and then winked. “Or, I suppose I know how you been keeping.”

“Not like that, there’s something you don’t know about me,” he took a breath. “I was in prison.”

“Prison? My, what for?”

“Trumped up shit. Some girl had it out for me,” Dean said, and let him fill in the blanks.

“Right, right,” Lafitte laughed, “I did a stint in prison back in New Orleans. Something went wrong with a girl and a gambling debt, tricky thing. But that was back in ‘31. Feels like a lifetime ago.”

“You have a woman?” Dean asked.

“Naw, brother. Not for a while either,” Lafitte told him and Dean knew that there was some other world where he’d tell him that he was all the woman he’d be needing. But that was a world where he’d never met Cas. “So you waiting on anyone at home?”

“Kid brother,” Dean said. “Well, not a kid anymore. Going on twenty five before I can blink. But a kid in my eyes. Brightest thing I’ve ever seen. Practically raised him. My mum died when he was born and my dad, well he wasn’t much of anything.”

“He ran off?”

“Sometimes I wish he had. He was an honorable man, you know, I think he did the best he could. But he wasn’t there, not after the war and then mum. Drank too much too. Had a temper like no tomorrow, even sober. And when he’d get mad, when I’d make a mistake or, lose track of Sam he’d just…” Dean trailed off.

“Sounds like a right devil you had, brother,” said Lafitte with a sideways grin. “Mine up and left us before I turned ten. Don’t know which of us had it worse.” Dean raised his canteen.

“To fathers,” he said and Lafitte raised his own in solidarity.

“May they rest in peace,” he went to drink and then stopped, “or wherever they are,” he finished and downed his water. Dean followed suit, bad luck to toast with water, he thought, Sammy had once taught him that. But it didn’t seem so bad as that was the moment when Davies decided to show up with an armful of bread and cheese and the spell of closeness between him and Lafitte was broken.

He was in London, but most days Cas didn’t know that. He had to take stock of the room now to make sure he had any sort of bearings. A chair, a table, a bed, sheets, a window (barred), orderlies buzzing around him, you’re in London, you’re in the sanatorium, your name is Castiel James Milton, you’re twenty five years old, the doctors have declared you insane. Sometimes your brother Gabriel visits and reads to you from  _ Howards End  _ , sometimes your mother and sister stand a foot away and gaze at you like you’re in a zoo. Your father has never visited. You haven’t seen him since they put you away. You were supposed to go back to Cambridge to read English, how many years ago was that? Most importantly: you loved a boy named Dean Winchester and he’s going to come back for you.

He was usually at his least lucid after therapy, waiting quietly in the bathtub before he could be let back into his room. He had to have a nurse stand by him the whole time because they said he would try to drown himself. She wasn’t even allowed to turn her back as he undressed which had been humiliating at first but soon it dissolved. Everything seemed to dissolve. He had wanted to tell people early on that he wouldn’t have killed himself, not ever. That he was waiting for someone, and it was just any day now that he would show up. But once he had been left alone in the bath and had held his head under so long his nurse had had to perform mouth to mouth. He had explained to her later that he just liked the look under the water, the calm reminded him of the fountain at home he’d said, but she had been frightened and thus the new instructions were enforced. 

She was good to him, his nurse. A dark and pretty Irish girl named Margaret, though right away she told him he could call her Meg, not Nurse Masters or even Margaret. She ran a tight ship and most patients found her terrifying. But she had taken a shine to him right away. She called him Clarence sometimes, Castiel, she said, was a mouthful, and it was close enough. Once, as he was falling asleep, she’d let slip that it was the name of her older sister’s baby who had died.

“She married an English man, a protestant. My Ma never forgave her for it. Nor did I truly,” she had sighed and stroked his head. “Can’t stand those orange bastards. Present company excluded. Told her she had no place coming back to us, to not ask us for a thing again. But when she had the baby, he’d already left her, and I was working in London and I heard it was a right messy birth, and I couldn’t stay away. He didn’t live long, a puny, sickly little thing. And even uglier than you. But his blue eyes...just as terrifying as yours.”

He never knew if that story had been a dream or not. 

He had realized Meg loved him one afternoon after a long session when he had been particularly inconsolable. They had had him in the machines for hours, and had upped his medication and life had been a waking nightmare. She had watched him in the bath and knelt beside him, and placed her lips close to his ear.

“You know, you’re not really insane Clarence. You can’t forget that,” she had hissed it and was gone before he could ask her what she meant; why she believed him. But he had known she loved him, against maybe all of herself. He felt Dean probably loved him like that too. Like his heart was working against the rest of him. Not Cas though, loving Dean, he knew, was exactly what he had been built to do. He couldn’t see any other use for not just his heart but his hands and eyes and blood as well. Sure there was room to love other people, he couldn’t even deny that he loved Meg, though not, he knew, the way she wanted him to. But he wasn’t made to do it.

That day she took him back from his bath and dried him off and helped him into his bed. He felt calmer than usually, and reality was clear. Beside him was his roommate, an older man named Balthazar. He was French in origin and had checked himself in a year ago after a nervous breakdown, and claimed to have a sex addiction as well. He and Cas got on well, had right away though he could always sense a distance between them. It was pity, he realized, that kept them apart. Balthazar was there by choice. He could leave when or if he got well. Cas was another story entirely and he realized sometimes, when he was fit to realize things, that he was a sorry case in the eyes of most people.

“How are you feeling today, Sparky?” Balthazar joked and Cas turned to him.

“Old,” Cas replied.

“How old?” Balthazar asked him. Cas sighed.

“Nearly one hundred I think.”

“You look good for one hundred,” Balthazar told him affectionately.

“Thank you.” Cas saw Balthazar had a letter in his lap. “Mail come?”

“Yes.”

“Anything for me?” He asked. Balthazar shook his head.

“I’m afraid not, pet.” And there again was the pity because mail never came to Cas. Certainly not the letter he was waiting on.

“It won’t be long,” Cas said. “He just has to get his hands on my address. And I’m sure it’s hard, sending mail out of prison. But he’ll figure it out. He can figure anything out.”

“Of course.”

“He’s going to come for me. I know it. They’ll realize how all this was a mistake,” Cas had told Balthazar this many times but it was important as he still didn’t believe him. And Balthazar was foolish to not believe him. “And then he’ll take me off to live somewhere, in the country. He’ll get another job as a gamekeeper, it won’t be hard, even without references, he’d figure it out. And I’ll keep house for him, I’ll do the best I can. Probably I won’t do well, but I’ll do what I can. You can come too, if you want. We’ll take care of you. I want to take care of you because you’re so sick Bal, but some country air, it’ll do you good. I’m sure he’ll allow it though he does get sort of jealous, but I’ll explain how it’s all decent.”

“I’m looking forward to it, pet,” Balthazar said and turned to one of the papers in his lap.

“Is that the  _ Times  _ ?” Cas asked. “I had a friend who read it religiously at Cambridge.”

“Do you want it?” Balthazar asked him.

“No, that’s alright, you keep it,” Cas said. “I wonder if there will be a war. Daddy told me they wouldn’t, but that awful friend of Gabe’s, Mister Ketch, he thought there would be.”

“I don’t know, pet,” Balthazar said with a cringe, and pulled his paper into himself tighter. Gabriel had come many times and Balthazar had watched him try to explain to Cas that there was a war, that Dean was fighting in it, that the Germans were attempting to invade London and that if any night he was awoken and forced down to a shelter and heard loud sounds he was to stay calm. But Cas had just kept talking, as if he didn’t hear him at all.

In the barn in France, Lafitte and Davies had fallen asleep but Dean had again been awoken by his own thoughts. Dean felt the cajun’s large hand on his shoulder and gently moved out from under his arm, trying not to disturb his sleep. He crawled against the wall and pulled out a piece of paper and a dull pencil. He felt searching for a candle was sure to wake the others up, so moonlight would have to suffice. He began to write.

_ Dear Cas,  _

_ I’ve written to you before, when I was in prison and early into being shipped out. But you never wrote back so I assume they kept them from you. I know you wouldn’t not write me back. I know you would never believe what they said about me. I know you.  _

_ But this one I’m sending to Gabriel with hope he’ll forward it to you. Our hopes lie with him now I guess.  _

_ I’m in France right now, I can’t say where. Two fellows are with me Davies, a cockney, and Lafitte, an American. I don’t think you’d like either of them very much but they serve me well as friends go. I hope you have friends where you are.  _

_ I’m not much of a letter writer. That’s really why I didn’t write to you at Cambridge, just as much as that I was afraid and stupid and felt if I ignored this, ignored you, it would all go away, anything I put on paper would just sound stupid. My best work was probably the one from that last night. Direct and to the point, you must admit, despite the trouble it caused.  _

_ I suppose I should tell you I love you. And I do. I love you. I love you. I love you. That would be this whole letter if you let me. I haven’t stopped. I can’t. I didn’t get to tell you. Not in the library, not in the car. But I think you knew. I think you maybe knew before I did.  _

_ Remember summer, 1934? Right before you left for Cambridge again? We got drunk and ran into the woods that night. And you and I got separated and I looked and looked for you. I was so worried you fell in the river and drowned or something awful. And it turned out you had tried to climb a tree and you had fallen and twisted your ankle. And I found you and carried you back to the house and when we got there I asked if you were afraid. And you told me you weren’t, because you knew I would find you.  _

_ I’m going to find you again. I’m going to come back. As soon as I can. As soon as I’m on leave. This is just our beginning. I know it. I’ll rescue you from that awful place and we’ll go where no one will bother us again.  _

_ I will come back. Find you, love you, and live without shame.  _

_ Yours,  _

_ Dean  _

He finished the letter and felt his eyelids drooping with sleep. He quickly scrawled out a note for Gabriel, begging him to pass it on to Cas, if he honored their old friendship at all, if he ever cared for Cas, if he believed a single word Dean said. Then he tucked the letter in the jacket of his uniform, crawled back under Lafitte’s arm, and fell asleep. He dreamed of fountains and libraries and of course, him.

Meg had gotten Cas the paper, finally after so much begging. He wasn’t allowed it because apparently he could use it to slit his wrists. She had passed it to him with an indulgent smile like his father slipping him candy as a little kid.

“I’m trusting you with this Clarence, don’t prove me stupid,” she said. “If I lose this job over your sorry ass I’ll curse you for all eternity. Don’t think I won’t.”

He had smiled gratefully and hidden it under his pillow. Later that night, before he went to bed Balthazar had passed him the pencil he used to fill in the crossword puzzle. He had looked at him cautiously for a moment and Cas wondered if he too thought he was going to stab himself in the throat with it or something.  _ They don’t understand  _ , he thought. They just can’t. 

He didn’t want to write in front of Balthazar, as much as he liked him, but once lights were out lights were out, and he had to make do. So he settled for pulling his blankets over his head, creating some sort of artificial privacy instead as he began to write. 

It had been a long day, Ishim (his cousin he often had to remind himself when the man stared down at him so cruelly he was sure he was the devil) had had him hooked up to the machines for hours, and he’d upped his dosage yet again so by the time Cas had gotten back to his room he barely knew where he was. He tried to focus, a chair, a bed, his friend Balthazar...but no, he shook his head. He didn’t like the picture that painted. It hurt his head. So instead he focused on what he knew for sure: he had to write Dean a letter.

_ Dear Dean,  _

_ It was a nice day today. I took a walk…  _

Where, he suddenly realized, he didn’t know where. He had been in a garden, a walled garden. A woman had been at his elbow, Irish girl, Meg, how did he know her? She must be a friend, a friend at Cambridge, studying at Newnham. What did she study? Medicine, that must be it.

_ I took a walk in the gardens with Meg, she’s at Newnham, and Irish. She’s tough and quick tongued, sarcastic, but never cruel because she’s sweet on me, sort of like you. Don’t worry though, she understands you and me.  _

_ This term passes slowly, I miss you, it’s never passed this slow, I don’t know why. I still think about the fountain and the library all of the time. Any moment alone I’m remembering them.  _

But there was more, right, he thought, there must be? What had happened after the library before he got to Cambridge...something with police, he was sent somewhere, he had taken ill...no, no that wasn’t right. That couldn’t have happened.

_ I know it’s not going to be much longer. Soon this term will end, or even better, you’ll show up. And we’ll run away, I’ll be packed and ready. And we can live together, some cottage somewhere up north and no one will bother us. I’ll do all I can to keep things nice for you and I’ll love you with all I have. I promise you I will. I don’t want to have more to give when you’re done with me.  _

_ Dean, we’re going to be so happy, you and I, so happy we won’t know what to do with it.  _

Why were they waiting, he wondered, why not leave right away? What was keeping Dean from taking him away right then? He didn’t care enough about school, about his family, about everything. Then the truth seemed to creep up on him.

_ I told you something, that night, I said to come back to me. And I know you’re going to do it, but I think I need you now. Please come, as quick as you can. Rescue me, I know you can do it. And then I’ll rescue you.  _

_ Your Cas.  _

“Lights out!” The voice that called wasn’t Meg’s but a different night nurse and something in that set Cas into a panic. He thought to hide the letter but she snatched at it before he could get away with it. “Writing a letter?”

“Yes. To my brother.”

“All done?” She asked him and he nodded, slow and uneasy. “Well, then I’ll see it posted.”

She quickly shut the lights out and left and he saw Balthazar looking at him in the darkness, that familiar pity in his eyes. With unease in his stomach, he closed his own eyes, lulled by the clip clopping of the nurses shoes in the hall outside. He was asleep by the time the nurse crumbled up his letter and tossed it in the rubbish bin.

Gabriel wrote to Dean in France after he received the letter. He had attempted to avoid service by fleeing to the United States, but decided against it for fear of what might befall Cas left alone in the country at the family’s mercy. Instead, his father had found him a low ranking intelligence position that kept him in London as part of the war effort, but out of any real danger. It was his last real gift to him, before he had died that spring, lung cancer. He hadn’t told Cas about it. It would just upset him, and it’s not like he visited anyway. 

_ Mr. Winchester,  _ he had written,  _ I am still based in London, as is the facility where Cas is receiving care. When you are back on leave, perhaps I could join you for tea and I can catch you up as best I can. I cannot promise I will be able to get this in to Cas, they’re quite strict on what he’s allowed to have. But we can try our best. Telephone me when you’re back in London and we can make plans to meet. I hope together we can move past the unpleasantness that has fallen between our families in recent years.  _

“Unpleasantness,” the word was so delicately ugly Dean wanted to spit it out. To tell Gabriel Milton he was just as much a bastard as the rest of them. But he couldn’t deny the hope the letter provided him and he clung to it desperately. It was the closest he’d been to Cas in five years. He quickly posted to tell Gabriel that his next leave was in just a week, luckiest of luck coincidences and he would telephone him as soon as he was back in London.

It was his first time back in London since the Blitz had started and though Sam had written to him of the beginning of the devastation, nothing could have prepared him for it. The smoke, the crumbled buildings, the feeling of anxiety pulsing through the whole city. Sam’s flat had been one of the first bombed and he was sleeping on the floor of a couple of school chum’s. He’d looked ashamed, showing it to Dean, but Dean had done nothing but wrap him up in his arms and tell him he was just lucky, lucky he’d made it out, lucky he had avoided conscription so far by virtue of still being in school for law. He was studying at the University of London by then. Sam had mentioned to him casually, awkwardly, that he planned to apply to be a conscientious objector once he graduated.

“I’m still a member of the party, Dean, there’s precedent,” and he had said it like he was ashamed, but Dean, standing there in his uniform, had been nothing but proud and relieved. Relieved that his posh talking Bolshevik of a baby brother was going to be at least somewhat safe from this awful war. 

Gabriel and Dean met in a small cafe in the backstreets of Marylebone. Dean wondered if he was ashamed to be seen with him, but Gabe was never one to let people see him sweat. He looked older, Dean thought, much older, and his short stature had started to show hints of the old man he would be, just like their father. He was no longer the dapper young man from that weekend. Even his suit, a dark blue, was more sober. His hair was cut shorter and he ordered only, Dean noticed, a cup of simple breakfast tea. Had they been boys, he thought, he’d have ordered cakes with it. Dean himself had ordered a pastry, Gabe was paying after all, it was the least he could do, and he didn’t know when good food might come by him again.

“How much do you know?” Gabe asked him once the pleasantries were exchanged.

“Just that he’s been committed since nearly that night, that’s what I got out of Sam,” Dean said, trying to keep the shake of violence from his voice. Cas was  _ rotting  _ and here he was, eating cake and drinking tea.

“Right, I suppose there’s not much more to know than that,” Gabe looked out onto the street past Dean. “You know Cas wanted to live around here when we were younger? Always dreamed of it. More so Bloomsbury I think, but still. It’s where Forster lives, and Virginia Woolf. Anytime he visited me in London I had to take him through here. A morning at the British museum, tea at some place like this, and then an afternoon making our way from bookshops to Regent’s Park just in time for sundown and him to catch the tube to St Pancras and the train back up to the country. He was like a child being shown the city, no matter how old he got.”

“Where are they keeping him now?” Dean asked. Gabe flinched.

“Chiswick. It’s nice there. Quite quiet. They have gardens and everything-”

“I don’t give a damn,” Dean spat. “What are they doing to him?”

“Treating him.”

“Don’t lie to me. Don’t fucking lie to me.” A few heads turned and Gabe shifted in his seat.

“What do you want me to say? They give him pills, I don’t even know what’s in them.” Gabe paused, remembering his brother’s glassy eyes. “And they take him for electroshock therapy, I don’t know what it does. Ishim swears by it-”

“Ishim?”

“Mummy’s cousin. He’s Cas’s doctor.”

“They’re fucking electrocuting him,” Dean said. And he felt himself shake and it took all in him to not run out of the cafe then and there, to show everyone what exactly it meant to be a soldier. To stab Gabriel through with the butter knife and then any doctor who had laid a hand on Cas. But he took a breath. He had to see Cas, nothing was worth more than that. “You have to get him out of there. He’s not insane.”

“I know that, but my family has him under a conservatorship,” Gabe told him.

“Contest it. Vouch for him. You’re his brother and an independent, take it to court,” Dean insisted.

“I’m doing my best, I’m talking to my solicitors, but, there’s only so much to be done,” Gabe explained.

“Get a judge in there, he’ll confirm Cas isn’t insane, it’s simple,” Dean didn’t understand why, if Gabe had loved his brother, he didn’t do this years ago.

“I don’t think it would be as simple as you think,” Gabe said, sighing. “You see, Cas isn’t sound of mind. He was hysterical when he was committed-”

“Of course he was hysterical! You lot were locking him up!” Dean barked and this time the waitress’s head turned as well.

“Yes, yes, I know that but now, well now, it’s escalated. You don’t understand, he’s been undergoing this shock therapy and these pills, I don’t know what they do, keep him calm maybe, but half the time he doesn’t know who I am. More than half. He’s just not...there anymore. When he figures it out, fully figures it out, all he does is weep and then there’s nothing you can even say to him,” Gabe paused trying to force down the memories. 

“So he’s been driven insane,” Dean felt the words fall out before he could stop them and Gabe nodded stiffly.

“In some ways, it’s a blessing. I mean the pills and everything, the way they keep him, it must be sort of peaceful for him. And I mean, it’s obvious, from the way he gets, the truth would kill him. He’s better like this, I think at times. Happier when he’s oblivious and not feeling anything that might hurt him,” Gabe said and Dean felt his mistake on instinct. No, he knows Cas better than Gabe ever could. To not feel, that would be worse to him than anything else. He’d rather be in pain, rather be dead. 

“I want to see him,” Dean said. “I’m on leave until Sunday. I want to see him, just once.”

“I can’t promise anything,” Gabriel said. Dean grabbed his hand.

“Please, after everything, I  _ need  _ to see him,” Dean begged him.

“He may not even know you,” Gabriel said, tears welling in his eyes with desperation. “Sometimes he doesn’t even know me.”

‘I don’t care. I’ve seen such awful things in these past five years. And I expect there’s more awful waiting for me in France again. But I can bear it, I can bear all of it, I just need to see him again.” Dean looked at him and Gabe looked back. He sighed.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Meg had eventually been the key and he would be eternally grateful to her for it. Gabriel had nearly accosted her on her way off from work and said if she knew any way, any way at all for him to get Dean Winchester in, they had very little time but she must do what she could. She had seemed hesitant at first, afraid of jeopardizing her position, but she remembered the way Cas looked when he talked about him.

“What you have to understand,” she had told Gabe, “is that I’ve never seen someone so lost as he is. When he came to us he was entirely lucid, hysterical and heartbroken maybe, but completely sane. And now...now he’s just gone. It’s enough to make me want to give my notice but then who would look after him?”

“I’ve explained it to Mr.Winchester he says he wants to visit anyway,” Gabe had said.

“Of course he does,” Meg would have smiled if she had any room in her heart for it. “I just don’t know why they’ve gone so far with him. Ishim pushes him like I’ve never seen. Unless of course, well unless the goal the family has given  _ is  _ to make him go loony. To make him shut up.” Gabe had shifted his weight.

“Look, can you get us in or not? Winchester goes back to France in a few days’ time.”

“I can get you through the back with the deliveries, meet him in the garden, he won’t be watched there,” she had said. “I can only get them a little time and like usual I can’t promise he’ll be much for talking to.”

“Thank you, I understand,” Gabriel had said. “And I’ll compensate you, best that I can. Don’t worry.”

“You better, it’s my neck on the line here.”

Dean’s uniform was a blessing. No one seemed to question why soldiers went anywhere and it was with ease that they made it to the walled garden that Saturday afternoon. The garden was objectively quite beautiful, red brick ivy covered walls, beautifully pruned grass, huge fir trees, some rows of flowers, and even in the center, a small fountain. But it wasn’t the sort of beauty Dean knew that Cas loved. Cas loved when the lawns of the property reached the forest and you could walk for hours and see nothing but trees on all sides. Cas loved to swim out just a bit too far in the river and Dean remembered from boyhood wondering if he would drown and unlike with Anna, he would have been happy to save him. Cas loved wildflowers and weeds and the old stonehouse they once discovered that was eaten by ivy and bugs. Man made beauty, in his letters from Cambridge during his first term he had written to Dean of it, was something he was repulsed by. The ivy covered walls were as much a prison cell as Dean’s own had been.

Meg and Cas sat on a bench, with their backs turned, Dean could see her talking to him. He wanted to run to him right then and there, but Gabriel had told him he had to stay calm or risk alerting another orderly. So he did all he could to keep himself in check, and walked over slowly.

“Nurse Masters,” Gabe said, and she turned to him and walked over to where they stood.

“He’s not having a very good day,” she said, knitting her brow. “He just came back from therapy, he hasn’t said a word. You must be Dean.”

“Yes,” he told her and he didn’t care what she had to say, only if she would let him go over to Cas right then because he wasn’t sure he could stand this a moment longer.

“I don’t know if seeing you will do him much good today,” Meg twisted her uniform with her hands but then Dean was through waiting, and he walked past her over to Cas and knelt at his feet. 

Cas was unshaven and thinner than he had been, though Dean imagined his own body must have looked much worse. His blue eyes had lost their ice, and seemed glazed over and unfocused. His hands seemed to be fiddling with the material of his shirt and his focus was there, as if he didn’t see Dean at all. 

“Cas, hey, it’s me,” Dean said softly.

Cas looked up and took him in. Dean watched his eyes search his face. Meg and Gabriel shifted anxiously behind him.

“It sometimes takes him a bit to be ready to talk,” Gabe started but he was cut off as Dean noticed a clarity come into Cas’s eyes.

“Dean,” he whispered. “You came back.”

And Dean was leaping to his feet, putting Cas’s face in his hands, wanting to weep but not wanting to let them see. Wishing they could be alone, wishing he could take him away right then.

“Of course I did.” His voice was firm and Cas nodded.

“I told them, no one believed me, they told me, they said you would forget me, Ishim he told me you’d long forgotten me,” Cas felt he was babbling and tried to breathe, “but I knew he was lying. I knew it.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” Dean said and Meg cleared her throat and took Gabriel by his arm.

“We’ll just take a lap, you don’t have much time before I have to bring him inside. Make the most of it,” Meg told him as they began to walk off. Cas leaned in closer to Dean.

“Let’s go right now, now that their backs are turned,” Cas whispered.

“We can’t,” Dean said.

“Why not? They won’t look for me, it would be too much of a scandal. We can go somewhere up North. I’ll keep house for you. We’ll work hard and it’ll be alright. If we live quiet they’ll forget.” Cas could see it all so vividly, the dream of the cottage he would have among the wildflowers. It was right out that door. But Dean shook his head sadly.

“Cas, I can’t run there’s a war on, don’t you know?” Dean asked him and Cas’s eyes began to lose their focus.

“Daddy says there isn’t going to be any war,” Cas said.

“There’s a war now. Germany invaded Poland, it was declared over a year ago,” Dean told him as Cas started to shake. “They bomb London every night, don’t you know?”

“They’re bombing London?” Cas’s voice sounded hysterical and Dean stroked his hair to soothe him, noting how it felt brittle and unkempt.

“Cas don’t you hear it?” 

“No,” he said, “I mean it’s loud at night, sometimes it’s...but why would I hear bombs in London? I’m in Cambridge?”

“No, Cas, no, you’re not.” And then Dean was frightened, more frightened than he’d ever even been in France.

“Yes, I am. I should be? I should be at school right?” Cas looked around furtively. This was wrong, something was wrong. He clutched tightly to Dean as if to ground himself.

“No, they took you out of school, they sent you away. Don’t you remember?” Dean asked, gently and it was then Cas started to cry.

“Oh! Oh God!” He called out quietly, as though his voice was too tired to really scream. “I don’t know where I am.” Cas let himself be swept up in his own desperation and he fell into Dean, pulling them both onto the grass. As they lay there, he curled into him, holding him tightly around the middle and tucking his head under Dean’s chin. Dean wrapped him in his arms and tried to soothe him, rubbing his back and shushing him, letting Cas cry into him. He was reminded of when Sam was a child and he would try to quiet him down before John got home. Cas’s weeping was just as uncontrollable, though even more pitiful. Soon he began to quiet slightly, and relaxed into Dean, as if he had realized he was at least somewhat safe.

“You’re alright, you’re alright,” Dean whispered. “I found you, I came back.”

“But you’re going to leave again,” Cas sobbed and Dean felt his own heart break in two. “You’re going to leave me here.”

“I’m going to get you out. Now that I found you, I won’t let you get away. I’ll rescue you. I promise.”

“You promise?” Cas asked and Dean realized he’d never been able to promise him a thing that night. Cas had given him everything, trusted him implicitly, and he had never even given him a response.

“Of course I promise. I love you, you understand?” Dean had known without asking that Cas did; had known as surely as he had known Cas loved him. “So I won’t leave you here. I won’t forget you. Love got me all the way here, it ain’t just gonna stop now.”

“I understand,” said Cas and he seemed to have calmed slightly, his body shaking less than before. “I love you too.”

“I know,” Dean said and kissed Cas’s hair. “I never doubted it.”

“They try to make me forget you, that’s what he does to me.” Cas felt like he was seeing things clearer again and tried to grasp at his own lucidity as desperately as a child grabbing his reflection in a pond. “He once said, he said all we had was a few moments in a library years ago. And that that’s nothing, nothing at all.” 

“He’s a fool,” Dean told him. “It was everything.”

“I know,” said Cas. “We’ll go, won’t we? When this is over, when we’re both free, we’ll get our house and we’ll live together. You promise and I promise and so we will.”

“We will. You don’t have to worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it,” Dean said. “I’ll take care of you.”

And Cas smiled at him and then began to cry again, quieter than before, and more controlled. There were no more words from that point on. What could they possibly say? Instead they just held onto one another and closed their eyes tightly; delaying the inevitable.

_ Oh God,  _ thought Cas,  _ why can’t we stay like this always?  _ He was reminded of the old poem “now more than ever seems it rich to die” and brought it into his prayer.  _ I am far more than half in love with him but if I cannot have him, if we cannot be happy, then let me die now. I’ll die smiling.  _

Meg and Gabriel made their way back and though Dean heard their footsteps he gave himself a moment before looking and letting them break the spell, when he did he feared they would notice tears in his eyes.

“Whatever they’re giving him, it has to stop,” Dean said fiercely and Meg winced.

“I don’t control his treatment,” she replied but Dean shook his head.

“He can’t stay here, if he’s here any longer he’ll lose his wits completely!” Dean heard Cas whimper slightly and clutch him tightly and he stroked his back again, afraid of how he would respond to the ever approaching farewell.

“I’m going to do what I can,” Gabriel told them. “I’m talking to my solicitors. They think I have a real chance at proving this does him more harm than good and releasing him into my care. With my father dead they think the case could be easier.”

“Talk to Sam, he’s a genius at law,” Dean said proudly.

“I’ll contact him,” Gabriel agreed. “Maybe the two of us can save our brothers.” 

Meg walked over to Cas and put a hand on his arm. He looked up at her.

“It’s time for him to go, do you understand, Clarence?” She asked and he nodded as docile as a child. “Say your goodbyes.”

“Goodbye,” Cas said to Gabriel and then he turned in to Dean. “Look at me.”

And Dean did, meeting his blue eyes slowly and carefully.

“I love you. Come back. Come back to me,” Cas told him. “I trust you.”

On impulse, Dean kissed him. It was quick and self conscious but as soon as he reached Cas’s lips his prayer became the same as Cas’s.  _ Oh God, let me die before I have to leave him  _ . 

But he then pulled away and stood up. Cas only tried to hold onto him for a moment, and then in defeat let go, his head drooping. Dean walked over to Gabriel to make their way out.

“I have a cottage, up in Ireland,” Meg said suddenly. “Well, it’s my family’s, I mean. My parents are dead. I don’t have any use for it. I could sell it to you.” Cas smiled at her.

“We’d be grateful,” Dean said.

“Thank you,” Cas added.

“I’ll take you there, you here? Soon as I’m free.” Dean needed him to understand and Cas did.

“Soon as you’re free.” 

Meg looked about anxiously.

“Go, now. Or you won’t make it,” she said and Gabriel gave her a nod and walked towards the door. Dean cast one last look at Cas, to memorize him, to give him one last chance to run, to let him know it all for certain, he didn’t know exactly why. Then he turned and followed Gabe out.

As Dean’s back turned, something seized Cas, something intense and overwhelming. He felt the walls close in on him. They’d missed their chance and he knew it. They were fools for not running right then, he thought. Why hadn’t they seen it? 

“Dean!” He called after him and Dean stopped, wanting desperately to turn around and run back. But he knew that by then they had gone on too long and so instead he walked on through the door and out into the crisp London afternoon. 

Dean was back in France by Monday. By Thursday, the army was being pushed to the North of France, to the beach. On the way he took a bullet wound. It was only in his calf, just a graze, but as the days after passed he began to feel feverish. He was with Lafitte, they had lost Davies somewhere in the fray and they were looking desperately for somewhere to rest and regroup. He was leaning on Lafitte trying to stay upright, the man’s strong form doing the best it could to support him. They found an old warehouse eventually, and stumbled inside.

“Rest here, brother. All you need is a little rest,” Lafitte told him as he collapsed to the floor. “Drink some water while you’re at it.”

“It’s so goddamn cold in here,” Dean said, and pulled his coat closer, suddenly desperate to get warm. Lafitte knelt beside him.

“You sure you’re feeling alright?” He asked and Dean nodded. “Drink some water,” and he offered Dean his canteen from which he drank gratefully. Lafitte touched his face gently, feeling Dean’s sweat. 

“I’m just tired is all,” Dean said and Lafitte smiled.

“Just tuck yourself in. Get yourself warm, brother. I’ll watch over you.” Dean saw Lafitte spoke but soon he was seeing Sammy instead. His real brother was there, though younger, not like he had been when he visited him in London. He was sad eyed and floppy haired like from youth, like the time Dean had the flu and their father had been out who knows where and it had been only Sam to awkwardly care for him, clumsy twelve year old hands pouring bad soup into his mouth. Sam was kneeling beside him, holding his hand and he looked worried, but Sammy always worried too much and Dean paid it no mind. 

“Dean,” he heard him say and he smiled. He was glad Sam was here. 

And there were more people too, he realized. His mother, in the white nightgown she’d been wearing when she had Sammy. Her face was broken into a laugh like when he used to tell her jokes as a little kid. And with her was Cas, same as he was by the fountain, and they were talking, he realized. It was Cas who was making her laugh.

“So you’re finally meeting him, mum?” He asked her and he couldn’t have been happier. He felt his eyes droop but then heard Lafitte’s voice cut through the noises, the figures disappearing suddenly.

“Are you talking to someone?” Lafitte asked him and Dean shook his head.

“No,” Dean said. “What do you mean?”

“You keep talking in your sleep,” Lafitte repeated and Dean’s head felt heavy.

“Thing is, I’ve decided to stay on a bit. I’m meeting someone. I’m always keeping him waiting.” He didn’t worry about mentioning Cas to Lafitte. It didn’t seem to matter much anymore. Lafitte moved in close and stroked his forehead, wiping away the sweat and Dean had an urge to grab his hand and make him stay with him.

  
  


“Listen to me, we’re getting evacuated, you hear? They got the boats. We’re getting out. So it’s going to be alright. You’re gonna go home. Anyone, anyone you think you’re seeing right now, you’ll see ‘em for real. Just before you know it. Alright, brother?” He asked and Dean nodded. He felt peaceful, lighter than before.

“Can you wake me before seven? Thanks so much. I just gotta get a little rest is all.” Dean closed his eyes as he spoke and before he even fell asleep the figures were back. His mother was gazing down at him, Cas had his head in his lap, and Sammy was holding his hand. He smiled.

  
  
  


  
  



	3. Winter, Early 1941

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot of anna in this one, some slightly gory descriptions of war wounds, nothing worse than you find in supernatural itself. also the book jack references is brighton rock for those interested, it's one of my personal favorites. very fun and catholic and creepy.

_ Winter, early 1941 _

Anna Milton did not feel as lovely as she had that summer day. With her hair tightly up in her nurse’s cap and blood on her hands, she didn’t know who the young girl with the Remington even was. She scarcely had time to write nowadays, except what she could sneak in at night in a notebook. She collected snatches of stories and ideas, visions from dreams. It would be something someday, she told herself, but it was nonsense for the moment.

She worked hard. She knew she did. Her patients liked the girl she could be for them, smiling and innocent and reminding them of home. She shook it off the moment she left the room but for one shining moment they saw all they wanted in her. It was good work, honorable. Her mother had wanted her to stay behind and get married. A parade of men had been put out. But she had gone to London and done her part. 

She stood, that day, in her superior’s office. The head nurse was an impressive and severe Scotswoman with hair a brighter red than Anna’s and though she was small in stature she was a force to be reckoned with. All the girls in the dormitory at night cursed her, Sister Macleod, that old hag.

“Nurse Milton!” Macleod called and Anna stood up straighter. “Do you understand why I’ve asked you in here?”

“No, sister,” Anna said. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Is this job at all important to you, Milton?”Macleod asked and Anna felt confused.

“Very much, sister,” and it was true. She had more purpose and joy among these dying men than she’d ever felt in Oxford or among the socialites she grew up with.

“Yesterday, one of your fellow nurses reported to me that her patient had asked for Anna to give him his medicine. He said Anna always does it better,” Macleod paused, as if for emphasis. “Who might Anna be?”

“Well, me, sister,” Anna got out, hesitant.

“Wrong! There is no Anna! You are Milton! Nurse Milton, is that understood? That is all you can be while you work here,” Macleod barked and Anna for a moment wanted to cry in shame and embarrassment. It felt just like her mother yelling at her as a child. But she bit her lip.

“Yes, sister,” she said and Macleod sighed.

“It’s hard enough here without getting familiar with them. It’ll go down easier for you if you do your work and be done with it,” Macleod seemed to have a moment of tenderness but then shook it off, “Now back to work!”

And so Anna hurried out of the room, back to the dead and dying and hopeless cases. 

At night she stood by her window, staring out into the night air, at the smog covered and smoking London.

“There is no Anna,” she whispered fiercely.

“Who are you talking to?” A voice startled her and she turned.

“Jo! You gave me such a fright!” Anna yelped, turning around to see the other nurse. Joanna Harvelle was a pretty young thing from Whitechapel with a tendency to drop things at the least opportune moments. She stood in her nightgown, wrapped in a sweater, her blonde hair blowing behind her.

“Is this what you get up to? The other girls think you’re having some sort of affair,” Jo giggled as she spoke.

“Was this a dare then?” Anna asked.

“Not at all, I was curious myself.” Jo glanced down at the notebook in Anna’s hand. “What are you writing?”

“Just things, I guess,” Anna said. “Stories and fragments and such.”

“Do you write about me?” Jo asked and Anna nodded.

“Sometimes. I write about everything I think. I always have. It’s how I make sense of the world,” Anna told her.

“Can I read any of it?” 

“No, it’s rather private,” Anna said, and clutched her notebook to herself.

“You do know how to make yourself a mystery, you should hear the gossip about you.” Jo smiled. “Of course I don’t believe it.”

“Trust me the truth is worse.”

“There you again, bloody enigmatic. Keeps me up at night wondering about you,” Jo admitted. “Though of course, I’m always up at night.”

Jo stood beside Anna and looked at London herself. 

“It’s so beautiful, I think,” Jo said and Anna wondered what the world looked like through the other girl’s eyes. “You don’t suppose it’ll all be gone soon? Sister Macleod once told me she thinks it’ll all burn to ash before the war is over. But I think she just said it because she knows my mum is back in the East End and they’re being blasted worse than anywhere else. She likes to hurt me, I know she does. I bet she plucked the wings off butterflies as a child.”

“I don’t know if she’s wrong. About London,” Anna admitted.

“Well, it’s good that we have a writer among us. To remember it all.” And that made Anna smile, if only against herself.

“I have been writing one thing for years. But it’s not ready yet,” Anna told her and Jo turned away from London to look back at her.

“What’s it about?” 

“It’s just about a young girl. A young and foolish little girl, who sees something from her bedroom window...which she doesn’t understand, but she thinks she does. And she does some awful selfish things because of it,” Anna paused, suddenly self conscious. “I’ll probably never finish it.”

“Don’t say that,” Jo said and reached into the pocket of her sweater and pulled out a cigarette. “Do you want a fag?”

“Sure,” Anna said and Jo put it to her lips. Pulling out a lighter, Jo lit Anna’s and then leaned in closer, using the heat from Anna’s cigarette to light her own.

“I look at you, Milton, and you’re all mysterious. I mean you’re clearly educated, clearly wealthy, and yet you’re here. And you don’t talk to anyone. And you sneak up to write stories like that. And I think, I’ve never been mysterious. I don’t think I could be,” Jo confessed it with a sigh, taking a long drag on her cigarette. “But do you know what I’ve decided tonight?”

“What?” Anna asked, taking a drag on her own. Jo grinned.

“I could never marry a man who wasn’t in the R.A.F.” She bites her lip and Anna bursts out laughing and it’s the most natural she’s felt in years.  _ I have a chance _ , Anna thought.  _ I have a chance to right myself. To be human again. To have a story of my own. _

Days later, Jo and Anna stood in the hallway on their break, yet again sharing Jo’s cigarettes. Anna loved their little talks, the way the smoke puffed out of Jo’s mouth and the closeness it provided. Jo could make her laugh like no other; she did an impression of Nurse Macleod that left her nearly in stitches.  _ This is what I missed as a girl _ , she thought,  _ this is what I needed. _

“Have you ever been in love?” Jo asked and Anna was flustered.   
  
“What?” Anna blurted out.

“I just, everyone thinks you have a secret fiance, I guess I wanted to know,” Jo explained.

“No,” Anna said. “No, I don’t have anyone.”

“But have you ever been in love?” Jo asked again, an insistent grin in her eyes.

“Once, maybe, I thought I was. I jumped in a river so he’d save me from drowning,” she admitted. She thought of that day often, the feeling of Dean’s body around her. And the immediate embarrassment afterwards.

“My! If I’d done such a thing my mum would have murdered me. Truly.” Jo said, eyes wide.

“He did save me though. It was easy for him. But the feeling sort of disappeared after. I don’t know if it was ever there at all.” She turned to Jo. “What about you?”

“Me?” Jo’s eyes were wide and trusting and Anna wondered in ways she’d never before.

“Have you ever been in love?” Jo took another drag and opened her mouth. But Anna never heard what her answer might have been, as Sister Macleod appeared looking harried, and grabbed Anna by the arm.

“Milton, you have a strong stomach, don’t you?” She asked her and Anna nodded.

“I like to think so,” she said.

“There’s a soldier, in bed 13. The useless girl who was with him took one look at him and was sick. Go sit with him. Hold his hand. Hop to it.” Macleod ordered and Anna ran off after her, throwing a look back to Jo on her way in.

When Anna got to the bed, the curtains were drawn all around it and it reminded her of the canopy on her mother’s bed. Naomi was far from the warmest of mothers, but there had been Saturday mornings as children when Cas and her, still in their pajamas, would crawl into bed with her and have the maid bring up breakfast on a tray. Her mother would brush Cas’s hair and read to them from the morning paper as Anna lay staring at the tapestry like pattern on the drapes and creating stories out of the figures embellishing it. She’d always felt safest there as a child.

Here was a room that felt far from safe. The dim hospital light cast shadows across it making it feel more like a cave than the sort of fairy room of her mother’s bed. The soldier in the bed was sleeping and he looked so tiny she could barely believe he was old enough to join up. He was younger than her, he must have been at least eighteen she knew, but he looked more like seventeen or sixteen in sleep. His head was wrapped tightly in blood soaked bandages through which a few locks of honey colored hair slipped out. Despite this, he reminded her of Cas at that age, something in the jaw and the eyelashes. She wondered what had made the other nurse lose her stomach; he didn’t look much worse off than the others. Quietly, Anna sat in the chair beside his bed and took his hand in hers. His eyes fluttered open and she noticed, numbly, that they were as blue as her lost brother’s. 

“Is the other girl gone?” He asked in a hoarse voice.

“Yes, she got called away,” Anna lied.

“That’s okay,” he said, smiling slightly. “You’re much prettier, but don’t tell her.”

“I won’t,” Anna assured him. “The Sister sent me instead so that I could talk to you for a bit.”

“Your younger sister, how is she?” He asked her. Anna frowned.

“I don’t have a younger sister, just a younger brother,” She corrected him but he shook his head.

“No, a sister. I remember.” His eyes were unfocused and she realized he thought she was someone else. He probably thought he was somewhere else too. “She was always so nice to me. I liked her. Where is she now?”

“She was sick for a while,” Anna told him. “Now she’s getting better.”

“I’m glad to hear that. It’s no good to be sick,” he said. “She was in love with some man, right?”

“Yes,” Anna said. “Desperately in love.”

“Oh yes, we all laughed at her I think.” He smiled. “Did she ever marry him? I can’t remember his name.” 

“Dean, and she will. Soon. They’re looking for a date, when he’s back from the war. It’ll be a small affair,” Anna assured him.

“Dean, yes I remember him,” He said. “He visited once. He took me fishing.”

“And you, what’s your name?” Anna asked, afraid to break the spell but the question didn’t unsettle the little soldier.

“Jack,” he got out slowly. “Jack Kline. They teased me, for my German surname. But you and your sister never did.”

“No, of course not,” Anna said gently.

“And you? I can’t remember your name,” he asked and she saw his lip quiver at his forgetting.

“Milton,” she replied and he grinned.

“That’s a boy’s name,” he laughed and then sobered. “It’s pretty though.” Suddenly his face seized with pain and his grip on her hand tightened. He began to shake, and she thought for a second to call for help but then he began to calm down and took slow calming breaths until he could stop his shaking. “I remember you now, yes. We’d see your family in Brighton during the summer, whenever mummy could save up enough to take us down there for a weekend. We thought you were all very posh, but you played with me all the same.”

And Anna could briefly see it, the waves on the beach, Jack in a bathing suit running into the break of the water. Cas chasing him out and helping him to swim. Her own toes warm in the sand and the blooming of a sunburn on her back unable to dampen her joy. The three of them curled up on a towel watching the sunset. It was almost real, she thought. The girl in that fantasy, in Jack Kline’s memory, she was good. She would never have done what Anna did.

“I helped you build a sandcastle,” Anna fabricated. “We pretended a dragon lived there.”

“Yes! I loved it,” he said and she couldn’t help but note how weak his voice sounded. “Can you do me a favor, Milton, please? If it’s not too much trouble?”

“Of course,” she told him. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“Loosen my bandages, please,” he asked. “They’re so tight.”

Anna stood up and went over to his head and began to unwrap the linen bandages. She would have to change them soon, she noted, they were so wet and sticky with blood. And she’d probably have to launder her dress again, as there was no way she could avoid getting blood on it after this. What a chore.

“I haven’t been back to Brighton since I was little. I miss it. I love the smell of the sea,” Jack said, his blue eyes lighting up as he sifted through his memories. “That novelist, Mister Greene, he wrote a book about Brighton. I read it while I was in France, it made it seem like it was full of crime and violence. That’s not how I remembered it. It felt like a fairyland to me. I don’t like books about dark things like that. There’s enough dark when we’re not reading, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” said Anna sincerely and it was then that she realized why the other girl had been sick. As the towel covering Jack’s head slid away she saw it: a huge chunk of skull was missing as if he was a china doll a child had smashed open. She found herself staring directly into his brains and blood, the red shocking and she wanted to run right then. Instead she pinched the inside of her arm and forced her feet to stay still.  _ Oh God _ , she thought,  _ Oh God this poor little boy. _

“You used to write stories didn’t you?” Jack asked and Anna, trying to not panic, desperately and carefully rewrapping his head, forcing her fingers to work and her face not to crumple, was struck by the coincidence. 

“Yes, I did. I would read them to you,” She said gently. “I don’t know if they were any good.”

“No, they were, better than anything my mother could invent,” he smiled. “That wasn’t her forte.”

“No,” said Anna, carefully replacing the towel, doing the best she could to not cause him any more pain. “But she was a good woman all the same.”

“I miss her,” he said suddenly and she was afraid he would start crying. “I wish she was here.”

“She’ll come to visit,” Anna said and tied the bows on his bandages. “Very soon, I promise.”

“No, she won’t,” Jack whispered and he looked as though he was going to start to cry. “They sent me a telegram…”

“Don’t worry yourself about that now,” said Anna as she moved to sit back down and gather his hand in hers again. 

“She didn’t make it to the shelter,” Jack’s face was crumbling. “I should’ve been there.”

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Anna said. “I hope your head is more comfortable.” Jack nodded and collected himself, stopping himself from crying. 

“I want my mummy,” he whispered and Anna leaned in to stroke his forehead, noticing he was beginning to break out into a sweat.

“I’m here now, don’t worry,” Anna said and he exhaled carefully.

“Please don’t leave me alone. Can’t you stay awhile?” He asked her and she nodded, reassuringly. She sat beside him for a moment, quietly watching his labored breaths when he began to shake with pain again and jerk into her. She grabbed him and held him to her tightly, and then lowered him back onto the pillow, still holding him close, still keeping him as comfortable as she could. His eyes opened again and while he still hadn’t cried, they were red and pained.

“I’m frightened,” he moaned. “Milton, I’m so frightened.”

“Anna,” she said firmly. “My name is Anna.”

And she felt his breath leave him, and his body become heavy in her arms. It was like he had sighed and simply stepped out of his skin. As all things went, it was a gentle death, despite all of the pain leading up to it. He was a boy, she thought in pain and revulsion, he was a little boy.

She sensed someone behind her and turned to see Sister Macleod staring down at her. Anna could sense the dressing down that she was about to face and didn’t think she could bear it.

“Stand up straight, Milton” Macleod ordered and Anna did as she was told. The little Scotswoman walked over to her and straightened the collar on her uniform and Anna was dimly aware of another nurse coming and pulling the sheet up over Jack’s face. As Anna met Macleod’s eyes, there was a strange tenderness there that she had never noticed before.

“Now go and wash the blood off your face,” Macleod ordered and Anna nodded numbly.

That night, Anna set to work on a letter. She had gotten Cas’s new address from Gabriel, he had handed it to her with distaste, saying he doubted she had much use for it and she had kept it folded in her journal, afraid to even look at it.

_ Dear Cas, _

_ I know you’ll probably just toss this away without reading it. But I need you to hear me. I’m in London, training as a nurse. I’ve tried to make myself useful. To make my amends. And now I want to make them with you. _

_ Cas, I can never give you back what I took from you. I’ll die feeling guilty. The nightmare you and Dean endured, it’s incomprehensible. I can’t make it up, I know I can’t. _

_ But I’m here and I work hard, I do. I try to forget but every time I close my eyes I see myself talking to that inspector, and I want to go back and murder myself, I really do.  _

_ I’m only now beginning to grasp the full extent of what a wrong I did. To deliberately cause cruelty to so many, the way that I did, it’s evil. _

_ I’ve wanted to see you since Gabe got you out of that awful place but I’ve just been so afraid to do so. I know I need to though, it’s the only way any of us can move on.  _

_ Please, Cas, tell me when we can meet. Write and give me a time, I’ll come as soon as you let me. _

_ I miss you, I do. And I want to tell you to your face. _

_ Your loving sister, _

_ Anna _

A few Sundays later she cleaned herself up and headed to Clapham to the Church of the Holy Trinity. She had considered not going at all, afraid she would see Gabriel or worse, her mother, but pulled herself together and went to see Ruby at the very least. The girls hadn’t talked much after that weekend. Ruby had gone back to Roedean in the fall, insisting she was fine, and was said to have become more withdrawn than before. Anna had written to her a little but received no response. She hadn’t gone to college and had a brief stint as a wild child once she graduated, hanging along to the last remnants of the bright young things, before the family had slapped some sense into her and she had demured yet again. The whole time, to everyone’s surprise, she had kept in contact with Arthur Ketch. He had made the name for himself he had boasted he would and his amo bars were part of the official war efforts. She wondered, numbly sometimes, if Dean was eating them, way out in France or wherever he was.

Ruby and Ketch were engaged to be married that weekend and Anna had been invited. It had been a perfunctory invite, but she wanted to go anyway.  _ I could have married him _ , she thought distantly of Arthur Ketch. Gabriel had brought him for her. She could’ve been marrying into a chocolate fortune instead of spending days and nights knee deep in blood, her head aching from screams and her eyes burning from lack of sleep. But she shook herself off, this was her choice.

She arrived to the church late, the tube slow as usual. She was still in her nurse’s uniform and a part of her knew it was to show it off. She liked the grudging and awkward respect it garnered, like she was forcing people to remember the war.

_ An eighteen year old boy died in my arms just a few weeks ago _ , she wants to say.  _ He was frightened and alone and he wanted his mother. You sent him to die and now you’re all dressed up for a wedding. _

Anna set quietly in the back of the church. She looked at Ruby, standing up there, a heavy veil over her eyes, looking so small in her wedding dress, and Ketch, smiling at her in a sharp gray suit. She could nearly hear the tutting of the matrons saying “what a handsome couple” but something about it turned her stomach. She hadn’t thought, until then, truly how much younger Ruby was than Ketch. He had more than 10 years on her. And as she looked at his eyes, the drone of the vicar falling deaf on her ears, there was something wolfish there, something she’d seen when she met him but had pushed aside.

“If anyone has any reason that this marriage should not take place, speak now, or forever hold your peace,” the vicar said in his steady old voice and suddenly Anna saw it.

That night, that awful, awful night and Ruby on the ground. She remembered dropping her torch, the man fleeing, but, she realized, sick to her stomach, she  _ saw _ him. Saw him looking flushed and unnerved and terrifying, disappearing into the night. The same wolfish look in his eyes.

_ What have I done? _ Anna thought and wanted to leap to her feet, to call out. But she found herself as immobilized as in the library. The vicar kept speaking and she dug her fingers into her seat to stop from screaming. Before she knew it they were kissing and the wedding march began.

They passed down the aisle on the way out, smiling and Anna did all she could to not be sick. It seemed both something out of a dream and slower than real life had ever been. As Ruby passed by on instinct she grabbed her arm, Ruby turned to her and she met her dark eyes. But Anna had no chance to say a thing, as Ruby shook herself off, narrowed her eyes, and walked on.

Anna couldn’t stay any longer. She found her feet taking her far off. Out of the church back to the tube and away from the wedding party. By the time she reached the tube the strange icy calm took her over again and she was in Balham before she even knew it. Her eyes were searching for the address across the houses before she found the right one. It was a block decrepit looking flats, the building grey and ugly. She waited a bit before someone was leaving and slipped in behind them, running up the rickety staircase. She would never have dreamed she would be in a place like this, certainly not that someone she loved would live here. But maybe, she reflected, this was a pleasant change from the sanatorium. When she reached the door she banged on it hard and when she received no response she called out his name. Finally, the door was pulled open.

“My, God,” said Cas and Anna stared at him numbly. He looked better than he had in the asylum. Still thinner than he should be but some of the weight had come back. His face was shaven and his hair cut neatly the way he liked it. He was wrapped tightly in a dressing robe and there was something about him, despite it being obvious that his health was improving, that still looked frighteningly frail. His eyes, however, had regained their iciness and the glassy, doll eyes she remembered from the sanatorium were gone. His eyes were shooting through her with venom.

“You never wrote back, I needed to see you,” she explained and Cas shook his head. He walked into the flat, leaving the door open and she followed, assuming she was allowed in. The place was cramped with just one window overlooking the streets. It was all one room, besides a small door leading to the broom closet of a bathroom. But the rest, the kitchen, a table, a curtain held up over where Anna assumed he slept, were all in that one box like room with peeling wallpaper and dusty floors. Books were piled about that didn’t fit on the furniture and dishes piled in the sink. The only adornment were jars full of wildflowers and weeds she assumed had been picked in the Wandsworth Common which was a short walk from the flat. The scent of pollen filled the flat.

“You’re a nurse now?” Cas asked and Anna nodded. 

“I can’t believe Gabriel lets you live in a place like this,” Anna blurted out and Cas’s lips pursed.

“He got me out. I didn’t want his money beyond that point,” Cas said sharly. “I won’t live off charity and I certainly won’t take a cent that came from mummy and daddy. I clean up shop at a grocers, it’s not much but it serves. And Dean sends me what he gets from the army as well.”

Anna nodded and ran a finger over the dust covered table, looking at the way it darkened her hand.

“I want to go in front of a judge and change my testimony, Cas,” she said but Cas stiffened.

“Don’t call me that!” He spat it out and then took a breath to calm himself down. “Don’t ever call me that.”

“I was a...I was a monster, I was worse than a monster,” Anna began. “I don’t expect you to ever forgive me.”

“Oh don’t worry. I won’t.” Cas’s mouth was set and his eyes far away.

“Even if they don’t reopen the case I can go home and explain to everyone, I can write an article in the papers-”

“Then why don’t you? Hmm?” Cas asked and Anna blushed. “I don’t see what’s stopping you. You have nothing to lose. They won’t declare you insane. Not at this point I shouldn’t think.”

“I didn’t know she would ever send you to that place I couldn’t dream it,” Anna insisted but Cas turned away, going to wash the dishes, needing a task, a distraction, anything to not see his sister. He felt the more he looked at her the more his resistance might crumble.

“Really? Because that night I recall you were the one who said the word sanatorium,” Cas said.

“I thought it was what was best. I didn’t think it would be like that,” said Anna.

“You have no idea what it was like,” Cas said. “I thought my body would burn away to nothing. You have no bloody idea.”

There was a rattling behind the curtain and both siblings turned around. Anna didn’t know what she expected Dean to look like. It wasn’t this. He looked old, older than she thought someone could look before thirty. If she’d seen him on the street she would never have dreamed he was her age. It wasn’t as though his face were lined, though his hair was slightly greying, it was more so something in his eyes, as mossy green as Anna remembered. They looked aged and weighed down and his whole face seemed to have sunk in to them, like they were chasms in his face. His hands had a shake to them and his hair was cropped in a neat military style. He was in a state of undress and she realized, strangely and idly in the back of her brain, that they must have been making love, maybe just before she got there. She supposed they had a lot to make up for. Dean didn’t look at her as he crossed the room over to Cas. She watched him put his arms around Cas tightly, who turned into him, and he whispered something to Cas. Cas nodded and Dean walked into the bathroom. She watched her brother begin to pull out bread and jam and set out plates on the table, clearing it off as best he could among the dust and mess. He looked up at her briefly.

“He sleeps so deeply,” he said softly. “I cry out in my sleep sometimes, and he sleeps right through it. When he has nightmares I can’t even wake him.” Cas shook his head as if in wonder and went back to finishing setting the table. Eventually, after long, awkward, quiet moments, Anna heard Dean finish in the bathroom and he stepped back into the main room. He seemed to fully see Anna then, to process her and he looked away and back at Cas.

“What is she doing here?” Dean asked and Anna flinched.

“She wants to speak with me,” Cas told him.

“About the terrible thing I did,” Anna said, finally getting up her courage. Dean shook his head and crossed the room, getting as far from Anna as he could, as if he was afraid of her.

“You know I’m torn between whether I should snap your neck or throw you down the stairs,” Dean spat out and Anna had an urge to bolt right then and there. “Don’t think I couldn’t do it. I may not be what you made them think I am, but I could do that.” He paused as if waiting for her response or for her to bolt. Seeing she did neither he went on. “You visited Cas in that place, so you know what it was like for him. Did you take pleasure in seeing your own brother have his wits taken from him?”

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Anna whispered and Dean banged hard on the table he was leaning against to support himself.

“Of course you didn’t. Did Gabriel tell you it took him months to nurse Cas back to health? For him to even start recovering?” Dean was close to shouting. “And me, do you have any idea what jail is like? Did you enjoy the idea of me inside there?”

“No,” Anna said.

“But you never did anything to stop it,” said Dean and Anna shook her head.

“No.” Dean stared at her, studying her face, trying to make sense of it.

“Do you think I raped your cousin?” Even then, years later, it was a nearly impossible thing to spit out.

“No,” Anna admitted.

“At the time, did you think so?”

“I didn’t know,” she said, feeling the calm wash over her yet again. She wasn’t afraid anymore, quite suddenly, as if remembering it all brought back the ice that had infected her that night. 

“But you know for sure now? Why’s that?” Dean’s voice shook with emotion and something in him reminded her of a wild animal. He seemed subhuman. Dean was a foaming dog and Cas wrapped in his robe a bird with sagging wings. Not her brother and a boy she grew up with. They were more creatures in a fairytale.

“I grew up.” Anna said it calmly. Dean scoffed.

“You were twenty three,” he spat and she lifted her chin.

“I was naive. I knew nothing of the real world.” And it was true. She’d been at girls school, summers at balls, watching boys from across a room. At Oxford she’d been at an all women’s college, nothing had ever touched her, come near her. In her eyes she was an untested child, everything learned from books and movies and snatches of conversations.

“I was twenty three too. They didn’t think I was too young to face consequences” Dean choked out and Cas looked up at him, as if begging him with his eyes to go to him and end this all at once. Dean wanted to, but he couldn’t stop. Not now, not for anything. “How old do you have to be to know the difference between right and wrong? There are boys younger than you were then left to die on the side of the road? Do you know that? I’ve had to leave them myself.”

“Of course I know that,” she said. “I watched a boy die, just a few weeks ago. He was eighteen. He looked younger. He died in my arms. Cas he reminded me so much of you-”

“Don’t speak to him!” Dean barked. “You don’t get to speak to him!”

“He had blue eyes like you, he looked like you had at that age, and he was so innocent, through all that, still perfectly innocent. Asking for his mother. And he’s why I knew I had to write to you. I had to make amends,” she wanted to tell more, about the dream of Brighton but she couldn’t find a way to make that make sense. And it seemed that Dean and Cas weren’t hearing a word she was saying and Dean was beginning to shake violently.

“That summer, you didn’t care about telling the truth. You didn’t care that a girl was hurt. You just wanted your revenge. That was all. That was all you ever wanted. You threw me to the fucking wolves because I yelled at you by the river.” He took a step forward, his fist clenched, and Anna was not afraid. A part of her wanted him to hit her. But Cas went over to him and took his face in his hands, gently, like he knew the exact amount of pressure to put to keep Dean there but not shatter him as seemed so easy.

“Dean, Dean, stop. Look at me, you have to stay here, please, look at me,” Cas whispered to him and for a moment Dean stayed glaring at Anna and then his fist relaxed and his eyes turned to Cas as if he would cry. Cas kissed him gently on the lips and Anna turned away, not wanting to see it, even after all this time. Still feeling shame rise up in her. Cas pulled away. “Come back, come back, come back to me.”

Anna didn’t have to turn back around to know that those words did all Dean needed. She could tell it from the way Cas said it, his voice soft and gentle but firm. He had anchored Dean with something more powerful than she could understand. Cas helped Dean into a chair and spoke to him quietly. Soft, soothing words meant only for him, and he brushed the blonde hair from his head with care. She caught a few sentences here or there.

“The cottage, Dean,” she heard him say. “Meg’s cottage. We’ll visit next leave. And when this is over. We’ll live there. Like we promised.”

Eventually he stood up but stayed facing Dean in his chair, unable to look at Anna.

“I don’t think I’ll ever truly leave that place, Anna. I’m grateful to be gone. And I’ve gotten better. But a part of me is always there. You can’t understand that but it’s true. They stole my self from me.” He was quiet for a long moment and Anna wondered if he wanted her to leave but then he turned to her. “Listen to me, there isn’t much time. Dean has to leave at six. So you need to do what we say. You need to write to mummy and tell her that it wasn’t Dean you saw that night. And you’ll see a solicitor and write a statement saying that what you saw wasn’t true. That all the evidence you gave was false. And you’ll send us all copies.”

“That won’t do,” said Dean mournfully. “Then they’ll just turn around on Sam.”

“No, they won’t,” said Anna. “It wasn’t Sam.”

“I fucking know that,” Dean barked and Cas was again rubbing his shoulder and soothing him. But now Anna wasn’t afraid, she had a victory.

“It was Gabe’s friend, Arthur. I saw him.” Dean and Cas turned to her, both shocked. Cas’s face contorted.

“How can I believe you? How can anyone?” Cas asked.

“It’s true. I just came from their wedding. Arthur and Ruby. I remembered it then. Ruby told me she was sweet on Sam, but she knew it wasn’t him who hurt her,” Anna told them. This was her triumph, this was her chance to be the hero. Unite two couples at once. But Cas only shook his head.

“Ruby can’t testify. She’s his wife. She’s immune.” Cas said it quietly, gripping Dean tightly as if to keep himself upright.

“I don’t know how I’ll ever tell Sammy,” Dean barely managed to get out. “I should kill Ketch,” he spat and Cas glared at him.

“Don’t say that. Even in jest. Not around her.” Cas inclined his head towards Anna who blushed the calm leaving her and being replaced with a strange and nameless rage.

“I’m sorry,” Dean muttered.

“Poor, poor Ruby,” said Cas. “Another life you’ve ruined.”

Anna stood there. And for one moment she wanted to scream at them. To call them ungrateful. To say she did the best she could. To say at least she was trying now. To say they should’ve been more careful and not fucked in the middle of the library like animals. To say she didn’t want to have seen what she saw that night. She didn’t ask for any of it.

But she took a breath and stepped forward and spoke as if she was a child giving a speech in the school play.

“I’m very, very sorry for any pain I may have caused you. I am very, very sorry for all of this terrible distress,” she said and she watched Cas stiffen as if he was about to burst.

“Just do what we asked. Write it all down,” Dean said, through clenched teeth.

“I will,” Anna promised. And unable to bear a moment more, she left. She didn’t stop until she reached the pavement and she glanced just one look up at the small dirty window. Standing in it, and she had to wonder at their boldness, were Dean and Cas. They were holding each other close, Cas’s head inclined in towards Dean, who rested his lips on his forehead. It was such a moment of peace, of tenderness and she couldn’t bear to look at it a moment. She tore her eyes away harshly and headed down the street. Back to the hospital, back to Sister Macleod and her remonstrations. Back to Jo who would forgive her anything only because she didn’t know her at all. Back to watch another hundred Jack Klines die in her arms.  _ I will never look back again _ , she told herself.  _ And that way, they can’t hurt me. _

She never saw them again.

  
  



	4. Summer, 1989

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is it. it's shorter. a little more discussion of the rape also a semi-graphic description of a lobotomy based on rosemary kennedy's. i ultimately don't know who this fic was for besides myself but i enjoyed writing it.

_Summer, 1989_

Anna had been interviewed on television before. But not for a while. She’d taken some time off before writing her newest book. And she was older now, 77 to be exact, and it seemed as she became older everything became harder. The lights felt brighter, the feedback louder, the chair more uncomfortable, the interviewers questions too grating. Anna liked public life, she always had. She had been one of those writers who was on the cover of magazines, not the recluse types. She had married, briefly, in the 50s. But that was little more than a dalliance at this point. Her life was more spent surrounded by friends who said nothing at all and meant nothing to her. In her older years she had permitted herself the solitude she’d never realized she craved.

“I’d like to ask you about your new novel, _Atonement_. It’s a period piece, set during the second world war. Which I understood you served as a nurse in. It’s your twenty first novel,” the interviewer was saying but she shook her head.

“It’s my last novel,” she said bluntly.

“Oh, are you retiring,” he asked her and she nearly grinned.

“No, I’m dying.” She smiled a little, enjoying the shock on his face. “Vascular dementia.”

“I’m...I’m terribly sorry,” the interviewer said, barely recovering. 

“It’s essentially a series of constant strokes. I watched it take my mother, too. So I feel sort of prepared. Your brain sort of shuts down like a machine, gradually losing words and then your memory. And as a writer that’s sort of the only point. So there isn’t much of a reason to continue from now on. I don’t think I’d be able to. So this is my last novel,” she explained, and crossed her hands in her lap. She’d been overwhelmed with nauseating fear when she began but now had reached a sort of calm on it. She remembered her mother, pathetic in the home they’d left her in. She herself would die in her own bed, she’d see to that. “It’s ironic, because it’s also my first novel. I began the draft of it while I was working as a nurse at St.Thomas’s hospital during the second world war, as the reader will remember. I just never could figure out how to tell it exactly as I wanted it.”

“It’s autobiographical isn't it?” The interviewer asked and she nodded. 

“Yes, none of the names are even changed,” she explained. 

“So is that why you waited, for enough people to die? Especially with the homosexual nature of the story.” The interviewer was blunt now, and she liked that. She hated the mincing little boys she often got, dancing around the real juicy questions she knew they were dying to ask her anyway. 

“Well, only partially. Arthur Ketch died in 1944. By then, people don’t always remember, the Germans were still bombing London but the public had become too disheartened to go to the shelters every night. Ruby, with time, remarried to Sam, so there’s a little happy ending there,” Anna knew the interviewer would like a little detail like that and had been waiting to slip it in since the beginning. “My mother died, as I told you, in 1949. The dementia in her had a much earlier onset than it had in me, I’m quite lucky. And my brother died in an incident of reckless driving in 1954. So I’ve been actually quite able to write this for sometime. I think I’ve just not known how to tell the story. I did as much research as I could, to fill in what I wasn’t present for. But the story that was created, the original manuscript, it created a sort of pitiless honesty that I didn’t think anyone would truly want to read. I didn’t see what purpose it served.”

“You think there isn’t a place for honesty in the novel?” The interviewer asked her. “People have applauded your prose for so long now for precisely that: its brutal honesty.”

“Oh that’s ridiculous,” Anna laughed. “I’m hardly honest, certainly with myself. And this book, as much as it is me atoning for my sins, is perhaps the least honest thing I’ve written. Because in fact, I was too much of a coward to visit my brother in his flat in 1941. The entire scene in Balham was invented, I must confess. The event that perpetrated it, the young boy dying in the hospital that was reality, though it happened earlier, in late 1940. But that only led to guilt, not action. And any action was, in fact, impossible. Because,” and here it was Anna knew, her real bombshell, and she sat up straight, looking directly at the camera, “Dean Winchester died in 1940, in Dunkirk, of septicemia, on the day before the evacuation began. And I never put things right with my brother Cas either because not long after he was released from the asylum, he drowned in the Balham tube bombing, when the water mains burst and flooded the station. So my brother and Dean never had that flat together, they were never reunited after the one time Dean visited the asylum. But I thought, that was simply too cruel. And I knew how much a hand I had in preventing their reunion. And what sort of message or satisfaction could a reader derive from an ending like that? Especially, in our world where we see so many people like my brother die on a daily basis. So I thought in the book, I could give Cas and Dean the happiness they never got in life. I don’t think of this as a weakness or an evasion but instead a final act of kindness. In my vision, in fiction at least, they live in their cottage together. And they’re at peace.”

She knew her publisher would be giving her a call sooner or later to tell her how splendidly it all went. She sat in her dressing room, her face wiped clean of the heavy makeup, and considered the woman staring back at her. _I’m still a handsome woman,_ she had to admit, _not a hag like mummy became._ There was a little pleasure in that.

“There’s a Mr. and Mrs. Winchester here to see you, ma’am. Should I let them in?” A frizzy haired stage hand asked her, popping her head in and Anna nodded.

“Oh, alright, but close the door behind them please. We’ll want to talk in private.” She hadn’t expected this. Didn’t even know how they had gotten the news that she would be here. It was irritating, she thought, but she would look too callous if she made a fuss. None of this could get out. She composed herself and waited for the knock on the door.

Ruby finally entered. She hadn’t seen her in years, not really even since the wedding. She hadn’t been invited to her second marriage. She was seventy and, Anna couldn’t help but note, slightly dumpy. She knew they had a few children and a horde of grandchildren. Seeing Ruby, spitfire little Ruby, turned into someone’s nan almost made her laugh. Anna never regretted not having children less than in that moment. There was something hippie-ish about her too, which was almost funny. Her face was hard set and her long grey hair fell over her shoulders and wore a knitted shawl. She was still beautiful, in a different light. But to Anna, with her own hair cut short and flattering and her turtlenecks and slacks, she was ridiculous.

“Hello,” Anna said calmly. “It’s been too long.”

“Sam’s waiting outside. He was going to come in and then lost his nerve. Or more so, I told him much good wouldn’t be done by just screaming at you,” Ruby told her. “You didn’t even ask me.”

“My publishers said it was unlikely you would sue,” Anna replied. “You have more to lose than to gain.”

“We could have made your life hell in the media. Be grateful,” Ruby said. “You know, I had actually figured out it was him by then. But I was never sure. I had to have it clarified by reading a review of your book in _The Times_.”

Anna didn’t know what to say to that but it was clear Ruby wanted her to say something, the way she stood there, her hands on her hips and her lips pursed.

“I’m terribly sorry Ruby, it was unthinking of me,” Anna said, and offered her a plate sitting on her table. “Would you like a biscuit, perhaps?”

Ruby slapped the plate onto the ground and it shattered at their feet, cookies crumbling onto the floor and mingling with the ceramic. Anna watched it fall like it was nothing, though Ruby looked beside herself with rage. The door opened quickly and Sam rushed in. He, she noted, actually looked much the same. Large and handsome, though he had lost his thick dark hair at some point and used a pair of large thick glasses. Still, he had avoided service, she remembered, and she wondered if that was why he had aged better than most of the men she knew.

“I heard something break, are you alright, dear?” He asked Ruby and then noticed the plate on the floor. “Should I get a broom?”

“Leave it, the crew will clean it up,” Anna explained. Sam seemed to take no notice of her and instead walked over to Ruby, putting his arm around her back and taking her hand gently in his.

“You’re bleeding,” he said and Anna noticed how Ruby’s blood had dripped a little onto the floor. _What a garish little mess_ , she thought. Ruby shook her head and sucked on her finger.

“I’m fine, it’s just a scratch,” she told him. “I thought you were waiting outside.”

“I got worried,” he explained. “I thought someone was hurt.”

“Were you worried about me or her?” Ruby asked and he did nothing but pull her in closer.

“We thought of going to the press, we did,” Sam said harshly. “Telling them everything.”

“But I told him I didn’t know what good it would do. And I don’t want to be asked more questions about it. I’ve had to explain too much to our children and grandchildren already. They didn’t know anything at all you know? This was how they had to find out.”

“I didn’t realize,” Anna said and Ruby cut her off quickly.

“Don’t give me that crap!” She almost shrieked it. “I’m strangely absent from your book you know. You don’t seem to care what happened to me after that night. It’s afforded a few sentences. I _married_ that horrible man. You never consider what that might have been like. What those days and months and years after that summer were like. That my mother made it clear she thought I had it coming to me. You never wrote to me. Never asked how I was. I don’t want your pity. And I don’t want your apologies. I won’t forgive you. And they may not have gotten a chance to tell you either way, but I am certain Dean and Cas wouldn’t have either.”

Those words would have been heavy on Anna maybe forty, thirty, even ten years ago. That day they were nothing. She’d written it all down. It was gone from her now.

“It’s a curious title, _Atonement_ ,” Ruby added.

“It’s a bit on the nose, I suppose,” Anna admitted. Sam tensed.

“But it’s not true. You don’t fully atone at all. You left out some very important details,” Sam said.

“I didn’t know what Ruby was going through,” Anna began but Sam shook his head.

“Not that, that’s awful enough in and of itself. You know the real way Cas died. You didn’t even mention that to the interviewer, did you?” Sam asked and Anna shook her head.

“I can’t tell people that,” she explained, a small weak grin gracing her face. “They’d never buy the book if they knew. Why, they’d brand me a monster! My publisher advised against it and I agreed with him.”

Ruby shook her head in obvious disgust. _Oh, please,_ Anna wanted to say, _like either of you ever did a thing for them._

“I don’t understand how you can just stand there and say these sort of things. I don’t know what’s missing in you,” Ruby said quietly and then turned in to Sam. “We should go dear. I don’t want to get caught on the tube in rush hour.”

And so they left, quietly and mournfully, tears in both of their eyes, and all Anna could feel was relief as the door closed behind them. The nightmare was over, they wouldn’t cause the fuss she had worried about. She sat down at her dressing table again and thought back on it all. Already her memories felt murky, and she felt content in the fact that she might someday, before she died, remember this all as she wrote it. But she could still remember the day in question as clear as crystal.

_October, 1940_

The Miltons sat in the office of sanatorium. Anna had come from work and was as usual in her nurse’s uniform. Naomi, of course, was pulled together and perfect, looking sharp and professional. She was a woman of her generation, sure, but with the edge of the modern world. Gabriel looked small next to the women and while they took the two chairs in the office, he paced in the back, having not even managed to take off his great coat. Ishim, their cousin, sat behind his desk.

“Tell us what we should do for him,” Naomi asked.

“It’s obvious, mummy,” Gabriel interjected. “He isn’t getting better, and he won’t. I can take care of him. I’ll get him a place in the country and I’ll take off time from work to care for him.”

“Cousin,” said Ishim and Gabriel found something stomach churning in his voice, always had, “you cannot give Castiel the care he needs. You’re not a doctor.”

“He was perfectly healthy when he came here! You made him sick!” Gabriel shouted.

“If we’re not going to discuss this like adults, you might as well leave,” Naomi said primly and Gabriel sulked into the corner. “What do you suggest? In your expertise as a physician of course.”

“I’ve seen many hopeless cases before,” he said and Anna thought she saw something light up in his eyes. “And we must accept, after five years, Castiel is hopeless. He will not recover. He cannot rejoin society. He’ll only injure himself and the family.”

“Of course, of course we understand,” Naomi assured him. “If he were to leave, he’d simply become a spectacle. If the press were to get their hands on it, well it might jeopardize both of your careers.” She looked over Anna and Gabe as she said this. 

“I would recommend, of course, him continuing in my care. But Gabriel is right, he hasn’t improved and he’s obviously in a lot of pain. And he disobeys orders. Nurses have found him attempting to write to Mister Winchester,” Ishim said and Anna felt a bolt go through her spine at that name as her mother tightened her grip on the arms of her chair. “He causes fits. He attempts to run off. He’s no good. It can’t go on like this.”

“But what can be done?” It ripped out of Anna, she was bored and she couldn’t stand the way the little man built suspense. He gave her a watery grin.

“There is a certain operation, it’s new. Only a few years old. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. It’s had a lot of success with these sorts of cases. It calms people. Done successfully he may even be capable of being released and put back in your care. He could live quite nicely up at Milton House I would think. He wouldn’t be a bother to anyone,” Ishim said. 

“What sort of operation?” Naomi asked. But Anna already knew.

“A lobotomy.” Ishim said it calmly and she heard from behind her Gabriel emit something caught between a huff and a groan. “It’s an operation to the frontal lobe of the brain. It helps correct things, when people have perhaps been built in a way that harms them. I’ve been pioneering them in my career, and I truly swear by them.”

“I’ve heard it turns people into vegetables,” Gabriel said darkly. “That’s what he’ll do, mummy. Turn Cas into a living doll.”

“That’s only in the worst of cases,” Ishim explained. “Usually it just placates them.”

“Placates?” Gabriel spat and he nodded. “He’s not a dog.”

“No,” Ishim admitted. “A dog would just have been put down.”

“Mummy, you can’t possibly be agreeing with this?” Gabriel asked but Naomi’s full attention was turned to Ishim.

“You think this is what’s best for him?” She asked and Ishim nodded.

“He’s not a force we can control anymore. And the things he says to the nurses, the things of the family, of all the unpleasantness in 1935, well it could easily get to the presses. And things might get out of hands…” Ishim trailed off and Naomi nodded.

“Is it safe?” She questioned him and he smiled again, as watery as before but broader, Anna noticed. It was the way she imagined a shark might smile.

“Perfectly safe. It’s a routine sort of thing. We’re experts in that here.” He said.

“Well then, I don’t see why not?” Naomi stated plainly. As if it was a question of a child buying sweets and not the condemning of her youngest son.

“This is insane, you’re bloody insane,” Gabriel cried. “Anna, you can’t possibly let them do this?”

All eyes suddenly turned to her. It was bright, the glare of their eyes and she didn’t want to have to stand it. She wanted to be back at work. She wanted Jo to tell her she was good again. Or Jack Kline to call her mother. But she was in that little office with a hideous carpet and three sets of eyes upon her. So she took a breath, let the ice wash her over and she met Ishim’s eyes.

“If it’s what you think is best for Cas, doctor. If it’s what will keep him calm and out of trouble, then yes, I think we should do it.” As soon as Anna said it Gabriel grabbed his hat.

“I don’t know who either of you are, I can’t be here for this I really can’t, I’m so sorry,” he muttered, overwrought and before she had a chance to turn back around he was out the door. 

From that point on things moved more efficiently in the conversation. Ishim explained the surgery in more depth and Anna pretended to nod along, her mind already on what she would have for lunch afterwards. A date was set and they thanked him for his time and care. They would visit afterwards to see if he could be discharged or not and it was discussed of Anna taking time off from the hospital to care for him, but decided that the war efforts came first.

Cas was not told beforehand. Everyone had decided it would be better for him that way. No fuss and all. Somehow Balthazar had found out though and he had spent the days leading up to it strange and weepy and leaving Cas on edge because of it. Meg had known as well and written to Gabriel who gave her a tense, short response telling her there was nothing to be done, that his solicitors had misled him and his case at releasing Cas was hopeless. All he asked of her was to care for his brother afterwards, as best she could. 

She couldn’t be a part of it. She had refused point blank. And she planned to give her notice once it was done. The nurses who came to take him were stony faced and foreign but he was not afraid. He had simply thought it more therapy. When he was led to the operating theater and strapped into the chair only then did he begin to become afraid. He had learned, over the five years, that struggling was futile, and he had been given a mild tranquilizer, so he was quite docile as they strapped him in. But Ishim soon began explaining the procedure and that was when he began to panic, his heart beating too fast, his wrists rubbed raw by his bindings. They were going to take his memories, that was all he understood, after years of battle, Ishim would finally win. They couldn’t. He found himself shouting. They simply couldn’t. Of course once they started to work, once he saw the pick, he simply froze. All of the fire that he had found in himself back in the library was gone and a terrible cold worked its way through his body.

“This is going to make it better, Castiel,” Ishim told him. “If I could have done this to myself when I was in your state, I would have.”

They asked him questions as they worked, to gage how far they had cut. 

“Can you tell me where you were born Castiel? What’s the name of the king? Who came before him? Where are we exactly?” 

He never answered a single one. He just screamed. He didn’t feel it, of course, he wasn’t in pain. But he screamed at them to stop, to let him go, to please not do this, to do anything but this. They didn’t stop and soon he could barely remember what was going on and he was just screaming indiscriminately. 

“For god’s sake, just put him under already!” Ishim had finally said, when his howling got too much. A nurse went to get a syringe but before it could be applied something went wrong. Someone slipped. It was never discovered what. But suddenly Cas was bleeding and feeling pain, more pain than he’d ever felt before, something in his head, and they were stopping and unstrapping him and Ishim was running his hands through his hair. They were placing him on a stretcher and going to bring him back to his bed, someone calling for help for a different doctor, it was all a blur around him.

Through it all there was Meg, running towards him through the crowd of nurses and reaching him.

“Oh God something’s wrong! You’ve done something awful to him! Don’t you see!” She was shrieking and his own body was seizing and he tumbled out of the stretcher and into her arms which grabbed him tightly and forced them all away.

_Awful, awful, awful_ , was all Cas could think as the world of whites and reds blurred around him. Meg was speaking to him saying something, pleading with him. She smelled lovely, he thought. She always had. She was beautiful. 

His body wasn’t seizing anymore, it didn’t seem to do much of anything. He could feel his own grip on it drift away and he didn’t feel much of a need to stay behind in it, the wet plunk of Meg’s tears on his brow the only sensation he was even dimly aware of. 

_I must be dying_ , he considered and he remembered what Gabriel had tried to tell him last week. That a telegram had been sent to Sam telling that Dean had died on the beaches of Dunkirk and he wouldn’t be coming back to take him to the country after all. The words had been meaningless then but he understood them in that instant. _See,_ he thought, _I haven’t forgotten him have I?_ And he let himself slip away.

Anna had cried at hearing the news. A true terrible sobbing like when she broke her arm as a little girl. It was the only time she cried. At the funeral she was already frozen over and barely heard it when Gabriel, drunk and disgraceful, called her a murderer. Her, not even mummy, just her. His eyes had been dark and red rimmed and he had been told he was making a scene.

“Oh yes?” He asked. “What will you do? Lock me away and shut me up like Cas. I’m afraid I’m not an invert myself so you won’t have much grounds.” 

He had been escorted out and she had not seen him again, did not hear from him until his third wife wrote to her of the accident. She had gone to that funeral too, with her husband, and it had been a much quieter affair.

_Back in 1989_

Anna shook herself. The memories came on thickly but they were far from pleasant. In her old age she only wanted to remember pleasant things. She pulled out her book, small and blue and handsome, and thumbed through the pages until she reached the end. The image it painted was like out of a fairy tale, the kind she would make up for Cas when they were both in the nursery. Two lovers reuniting in a secluded cottage in a faraway land. She had spoken with Margaret Masters, who was surprisingly still alive and willing to talk to her, if only so someone could know the truth about Cas. The old bat, for that was what she was, had been living up in the cottage for years, surviving off of her pension. It was a decrepit little shack. But just the sort of thing her brother would have loved.

It was a shame, Anna thought, a shame. And she closed the book and checked her reflection again. Strangely, she noticed she was crying, and laughed a little wiping it away. _What a silly thing for me to do_ , she thought, and began to worry about hailing a cab. Ruby had been right after all, it was nearing rush hour.

_In heaven or what you will…_

They fixed the cottage up. Put some new paint on the roof and cleaned the stone walls. Cas filled it with wildflowers though Dean does most of the cooking (Cas doesn’t have much of a knack for it). They keep bees and chickens and their garden is a mess because Cas is too tender hearted to weed. They have an old truck and drive into town every so often to sell eggs and honey, where the quiet Irish folk regard them with suspicion but indifference. Meg visits them sometimes, when she gets a weekend, and Balthazar does too, though Dean has never truly taken to him like Cas did. They love unselfconsciously and easily and Cas finds that the fire within him is a pleasant simmer and Dean finds the shame in his heart has eased. Once they found a young boy lost in the woods and they took him in, fattened him up, and called him their own. They know pain, but they like to, broken bones, burns from the stove, fights over nothing, and it’s pain they can bear easily, simple parts of existence. Sometimes they think about things past and can do nothing but smile, safe in the knowledge that all that business is over. Light pours in easily through the windows and they've never been somewhere warmer or safer and when they take the moments to notice details like this, they smile secret smiles at one another and need no words at all. They work hard and sleep heavily at night, exhausted after each day, and dream gently in each other’s arms.

  
  



End file.
